


The Termination

by seriousness



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Abortion, Awkward Sexual Situations, Dathomir (Star Wars), Discussion of Abortion, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Family History, Force Ghosts, Force Visions, Loss of Virginity, Magical Pregnancy, Misuse of the Force, Mortis (Star Wars), Nightsisters (Star Wars), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Propaganda, Slow Burn, Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2020-11-08 10:35:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 62,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20834045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seriousness/pseuds/seriousness
Summary: The doctor handed off two pills in a small green box and told her how to take them. Within three days Rey was no longer pregnant with the Force’s baby. Or, whoever’s it was. The Force didn’t try again.#Let’s not kid ourselves. The Force tried again. There’s a reason they don’t call it the Ask Politely.--Rey and Kylo are once again thrown together by the strange machinations of the Force. They embark on a quest to discover what's happening to them and whether they can stop it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first couple scenes as an angry drabble-response to an assertion that Rey would "probably" end up pregnant with a Skywalker-clan baby in IX and then somehow wrote like...many thousands more words. 
> 
> If you find pregnancy or abortion triggering or otherwise offensive, it will be immediately clear that this is not a fic for you. I think my attitudes on the topic are pretty clear.

It took three days for Rey to find a clinic. She’d been practically in Wild Space, and clinics that she knew to be Resistance-friendly were few and far between even in the Core worlds. But once she did, on Hypori of all places, she walked right in the front door without even comming first.

“Do you have an appointment, miss?” a bored-sounding droid asked at the front desk.

“Not as such,” Rey replied. “I have Resistance Q priority, though. Access code 1138.”

“I see,” the droid responded, a skeptical tone detectable as he entered the access code. “Ah. I _see_,” he repeated. “Right this way, please, Knight Rey.”

Rey suppressed a snort. She wondered what prankster had entered her formal rank as “Knight” - and why Resistance computer systems even had such a rank anymore. Probably it was just that nobody had updated the personnel software the Resistance had pirated from Republic systems before she was born, back when there were Jedi knights all over the place. Supposedly. 

She followed the droid down a long, well-lit hall. “Room grek, please. I’ll need to shift some appointments around, but the doctor will be with you within half an hour. Please remove your clothing and put on this gown.”

The doctor was there in seventeen minutes. 

#

“So,” the doctor looked down at her datapad, “Knight Rey, what can I help you with today?”

Rey felt herself blush. “I think I’m pregnant, and I need an abortion.”

“I see. Why do you think you’re pregnant? Missed cycle?”

“Ah, no, I have nanobots.” Rey pointed to her arm. “General Organa asked me to get them in advance of a long assignment a couple of years ago, and they’re still operational.” 

“I see.” Nanobots were typically reckoned to be very accurate indicators of one’s current health status. The doctor scanned Rey’s medical implant with her datapad. “Yes, you are. Funny, these nanobots are in prevention mode. This shouldn’t even have happened. Of course, every method fails occasionally, but you can rest assured it’s highly unlikely to recur. I’m required by law to ask this: are you in an abusive situation? Is the person who impregnated you aware of your condition, and do you run the risk of retribution if you do or don’t terminate the pregnancy? There are programs I can refer - ”

“Oh no, no. It’s only I think it might be Kylo Ren’s, you see, and I’d really rather - ” Rey noticed that the doctor had gone pale and shut her mouth abruptly.

“_Might_ be _Kylo Ren’s_! Oh, you poor dear. That must have been one hell of an interrogation.” Resistance-friendly doctors had seen it all. 

Rey waved a nonchalant hand. “Nothing like that, don’t worry. I haven’t had intercourse of any kind in months. _Years_. I’m given to understand sometimes the Force just, snap,” she snapped a finger, “knocks women up. I have no idea what sort of genetic material was involved, or if any was, as it all seems highly questionable to me scientifically, but the Force has been trying to set me up with that mess of a human being for ages. It adds up. I just can’t take the risk that it might be his. I mean, have you _met_ him?”

“I haven’t,” the doctor said, looking faint.

“Well done. Wish I hadn’t either. In any case, in the event that the Force has seen fit to impregnate me with his guaranteed-cranky offspring, I’d like to let the Force know I’m not interested. Emphatically.”

“Yes,” the doctor replied. “I see.” She clearly didn’t. “Well, I’ve run your numbers and you appear to be about seven weeks. Absolutely early enough for an uncomplicated chemical abortion. I’ll just run across the hall now for the pills.”

The doctor handed off two pills in a small green box and told her how to take them. Within three days Rey was no longer pregnant with the Force’s baby. Or, whoever’s it was.

The Force didn’t try again.

#

Let’s not kid ourselves. The Force tried again. There’s a reason they don’t call it the Ask Politely.

The next few cycles, one after another, Rey’s monthly stain didn’t come, and one after another the nanobots informed her a few days later that her hormones had shifted yet again, indicating conception. The second time she asked for a new implant, to be sure. The third time she asked the doctor for a few more packs of the pills, just in case. And used them, by herself, to end pregnancy after pregnancy.

After six chemical abortions in seven months Rey was beginning to be concerned that it couldn’t be healthy to keep this up. She’d resisted for a long time, not wanting the confrontation, but finally returned to the Force wellspring on Ahch-To for a session of deep meditation. She settled into her stance, allowed her eyes to drift shut, and reached out along a well-trodden vector she hadn’t ever tried to consciously access before. A few minutes passed, or a few hours.

“Long time,” said a deep voice she’d hoped never to hear again.

“Yes,” she agreed, opening her eyes. There he was, looking underslept. “You look terrible.”

“Nightmares,” he replied with a dismissive wave. “Did you initiate this? You did. Why?” Suspicion crept into his voice. “You know where to find me. Everyone knows where I am.”

“What are your nightmares about?”

“None of your concern.”

“It might be,” Rey hesitated. “Are you conscious of,” she swallowed, trying to figure out how to say it and wishing she’d thought this conversation through a bit more thoroughly before beginning her meditation, “any sort of, well, volition? Through the Force, lately? Any nudges in a…direction?”

“Nothing I’d tell you about.”

“Ben, it’s important.”

“Don’t call me that.” 

“_Kylo_, then. I wouldn’t have contacted you if it wasn’t important.”

“Stop hinting around. We never know how long these conversations will last. If you have a question, ask it.”

Rey heaved a deep sigh. “Fine. Have you received any - do you have any reason to believe the Force might be trying to impregnate me with your child?”

He sat down, visibly shaken. “Yes.”

The Force connection cut out. 

“Kriff!” Rey hissed. 

#

Meditation no longer worked as a way to contact Kylo Ren, and Rey suspected the Force was doing it on purpose. She managed to get through one cycle normally, but when her nanobots pinged her holocommunicator once again with the happy news that she could expect a bouncing bundle of joy in eight months’ time she took her last pack of pills with an angry growl and keyed in Mustafar on her navigation console. She did, indeed, know where Kylo Ren was. Everyone did.

Her astromech made an uneasy chirp and she growled louder. “As if I wanted to see that sleemo again,” she muttered. “But if he knows something about this maybe I can figure out a way to stop it.”

Rey hadn’t been to Mustafar - most people hadn’t - but she’d seen holos of the imposing fortress Lord Ren had commissioned to be built on the volcanic planet in one of his first acts as Supreme Leader. She wasn’t looking forward to walking up to it in person. Did one  _knock_ ? She filled the hyperspace journey pondering what it would be like to see him, what his castle would be like, how heavily guarded it would be, where she’d land her junker of an ancient X-wing, and so forth. She felt deep foreboding and told the Force out loud to stop manipulating her.

As it happened, he sent up a two-fighter escort when she entered the atmosphere, and they herded her toward a shiny new landing pad. He was there to greet her when she touched down. He looked even worse in person than he had on holo - lank-haired, thinner than she remembered, with dark circles like bruises under his eyes. 

“Shouldn’t you be…busier?” she asked by way of greeting.

“Good to see you too,” he deadpanned.

“Listen, you know why I’m here.”

“I do.” He turned, beckoning her to follow with a black-gloved hand. She followed.

He led her to a large, black office with a large, black desk and a huge transparisteel window facing molten, steaming lava. “Very dramatic,” she commented. “I suppose your grandfather would love this.” 

“So they say,” he said, waving her towards a chair. “So. The Force.”

“Yes. The Force,” she agreed, still standing. 

“I keep having these _disturbing_,” he began saying just as she began saying, “I’ve been pregnant _seven_,” and then they both stopped and looked at each other.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I did have suspicions. You know, they say Darth Vader’s mother was a virgin?”

“I would have no reason to know that.” 

“But you knew the Force was,” he started, then failed to end the sentence. “But why did you think it was mine? Have you been - dreaming, too?”

She shook her head. “Just a feeling,” she said. “You know.” 

“Yes.”

They sat in silence.

“I haven’t enjoyed the dreams. They haven’t been - this hasn’t been voluntary. On my part. They - aren’t pleasant.” 

“That’s more consolation than I would have expected,” she replied. “I’m just - I don’t know how many of these chemical abortions my body can take in such a short span, and I really - no offense - ”

“None taken.” 

It was awkward how they kept not needing to finish sentences. It felt intimate, more intimate than Rey wanted to feel with a man she still, to some extent, despised. “So what do we do?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed. “I don’t think the Force really - welcomes our input, on this. I’ve meditated on it every day, for months. No change. Every night.” 

“I don’t even know how it’s happening. My nanobots should be able to prevent it.”

“I got a vasectomy.” 

“What, just now?”

He nodded, then shrugged. “Three months ago. Just - just trying to - I don’t know, it wasn’t rational.”

“Just trying to send a message. Let it know.” 

He nodded again, just once. “My family’s been the subject of the Force’s whims and caprices for generations. I’ve thought of suicide just to ensure it ends with me.”

Rey nodded solemnly. “I can’t say the same, not yet. But I understand. I’ve - I mean, maybe I should just get a hysterectomy, seems it’d be much more complicated to accomplish this if I’m down a uterus, but I wanted - the only thing I’ve ever really wanted was a family, my own, normal family, just - ”

“Not like this,” he interrupted. 

“Not like this,” she affirmed. “But maybe being gifted with the Force just means I can’t - that it isn’t up to me? Maybe it’s the price we pay?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t mean that. I can’t believe that’s true. I’m sure there are Force sensitives who’ve had perfectly normal family lives. _My _family was the aberration - it’s why Snoke went after me. Why the Emperor went after my grandfather. We never had a chance. Begotten by the Force.” 

“As this child would be, in a sense.”

“Yes.”

“No offense intended, but I can’t - ”

“You can’t knowingly bring another innocent child into the Skywalker legacy. Of course. And I would do everything in my power to kill you before that child was born if I knew you were.”

They both fell silent.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey makes a new friend.

Rey broke the silence with a bitter laugh. “So, it’s murder-suicide, then?”

“No. No, there has to be another way. I don’t know the details, but Skywalker once told me there are ways - places one can confront the Force.”

“Oh, I’ve been to one, on Ah - ” Rey broke off, realizing Kylo Ren still didn’t know where Luke Skywalker had been in hiding and he wasn’t about to hear it from her, “I’ve been to one. But it wasn’t satisfying. I told you about it. I didn’t learn what I wanted to know.”

“I didn’t mean places like that. There’s a dark side focus on Mustafar too, though it’s hard to access due to the lava. I went there once, and I won’t go back again. The energy there is fresh, raw. Its creation had something to do with my family - I wasn’t able to understand exactly what - but whatever it was, it wasn’t power I could use. But there are places steeped even deeper - places where the Jedi or the Sith built temples, even whole planets alive with the Force. I don’t know much about them, unfortunately. Most of the knowledge of such things died with the Jedi, or with the Emperor.”

“Or with Snoke.”

“I don’t think Snoke ever knew anywhere near as much as he claimed.” The bitterness in his voice gave Rey cause to give him a closer look. She’d been mesmerized by the flowing lava out the window, but for the first time she really examined his face closely. The dark circles were even worse than she’d realized outdoors. And she could detect just the barest hint of a tremor, in his hands and arms.

“Are you sleeping at _all_?”

One of his eyes twitched involuntarily, a brief flutter of dark eyelashes. “I’m meditating.”

“You know that’s no substitute.”

He was quiet for a long time. “The dreams are _unbearable_, Rey.”

“Would it help to talk about them?”

“Absolutely not.” The floor shook as a wave of lava crashed over a shelf of rock outside, destroying it. “Did you know Darth Vader used to have a castle here?”

“No. Can we go there? Maybe we’d find some kind of, I don’t know, clue or something.”

“The New Republic blew it up. But even if they hadn’t, it would have been absorbed by the planet by now. If it were still standing, we could see it from this window.”

“Inconvenient.”

There was a brief silence as they both watched a particularly impressive wave of lava rise and subside. Then Kylo spoke again. “So, I know of the wellspring here. And you know of one, on a planet you’re suspiciously refusing to name. But neither of them are what we need, and we don’t know where else to go.”

“Was there one near where your uncle started the school?”

“No. He didn’t want his students to be tempted to go there before we were ready.” He shook his head. “There were a few places he took us for tests, for milestones - but he never told us how to get to them. Skywalker was overprotective, never really sure his students understood their weaknesses. He didn’t trust us to face those sorts of challenges.”

“Ah!” Rey snapped a finger, having a sudden thought. “I have some ancient Jedi texts. I can’t make much sense of them - perhaps you can?”

“_You_ have ancient Jedi texts? What, did you liberate them from some decomposing Star Destroyer?”

“Something like that.”

His eyes widened. “You’re serious. You have - or believe you have - some ancient Jedi texts in your possession. I don’t suppose you have them with you?”

“Oddly, I do. I’m not sure where to leave them to be sure nobody will take them, and they aren’t very big, so I’ve just been keeping them with me. Honestly, I’d half forgotten I even had them. They’re in my X-wing.”

“Not that it’s likely I can read them either. But maybe it’s a start.” In unspoken agreement, they began walking back to the landing pad.

“Perhaps while you’re looking at them, I should travel to the Force wellspring here, if you don’t mind telling me how to approach it.”

“You aren’t afraid?”

“No. As you described it, your inability to use the power may have had had something to do with your lineage. That isn’t a concern for me. Perhaps, given why I’m here, it would be useful for me to engage with it. Perhaps I’ll learn something.” 

Kylo Ren pressed his lips together. “I suppose it can’t hurt.” 

Of course, it could. They both knew it.

Once they arrived on the landing pad, Rey hopped lightly into her X-wing and pulled the Jedi volumes out of a smugglers’ compartment she’d installed below the seat. “Hope you can make head or tail of these.” She handed the small pile to him.

His facial expression changed as he touched them. “Rey, really, where did you get these?”

“Here and there,” she said with a shrug, the only place a scavenger would ever admit to have gotten anything. She felt almost insulted that he would ask. “Why?”

“They’re _very_ old. And they’ve - I don’t know how to explain it. They’ve seen a lot. I don’t understand how they haven’t been destroyed.”

It crossed Rey’s mind to be concerned that Kylo Ren would consider it his duty to finish them off, as his uncle had attempted to do. But this seemed to be a situation in which one could trust in the Force. If the texts were meant to continue their unlikely survival, they would find a way. Rey glumly pondered her faith that this was so in light of her repeated pregnancies and terminations, and ground her teeth, hating everything about this situation. “Are you going to tell me how to get to that Dark Side focus, or not?”

“I’ll program the location into a hoverspeeder,” he replied absently, clearly still focused on whatever strange stirrings he was feeling from the texts in his hands. 

#

Rey thanked the Force for her childhood on Jakku. If she hadn’t grown up in the desert she was sure she’d have fainted from the heat of the lava rising into the open-topped speeder. Kylo had apologized for not having one with a full-cover windscreen available, but she’d waved a hand, sure she could handle it. She was still sure, but not as sure as she had been.

Rey was sure this was going to go okay.

But Rey didn’t know whether or not she could trust those feelings.

The hoverspeeder came to a smooth stop at a dark island of pitch-black igneous rock surrounded on all sides by churning lava and flame. Given the volcanic activity on this part of the planet, there had to be something supernatural at work to preserve this island. Rey left the speeder a few meters from the edge of the island and walked where her heart took her. The island had no discernible features other than the natural dips and furrows created by ropy lava where it had cooled. The ground was cold to the touch.  


And suddenly, she was no longer on an island. No longer unbearably hot. She was somewhere else entirely. 

It took her a moment to place it. The wide, grey, hard bench, the corrugated floor. Then of course she knew where she was. This was a holding cell in an Imperial vessel - not quite a Star Destroyer, but something of a similar vintage. She’d been in them a million times, by herself, as a lone child exploring wrecked ships on Jakku. And after a couple of close calls, she knew how to not be in one anymore. 

She counted over three panels in the floor, pulled a hairpin out of her hair, and jimmied the floorboard up out of its housing. Then she used the hairpin’s sharp ends to strip the ends of the three brown wires. As she prepared to touch them together, however, the door to the cell slid open and a figure from a nightmare stepped in.

Over six feet high, all black, booted and caped, but the breathing from his respirator was what chilled her blood the most. This was Darth Vader. When she was little the aunties in Niima village had told children that if they stepped out of line, Darth Vader would come in the night and spirit them away. “All in black he roams the galaxy, and takes the babies what don’t do as they should, and you hear his breaths echo through the night as he goes.” She’d thought Kylo Ren was Darth Vader, the first time she’d seen him in his mask. Of course that was intentional. 

Rey felt her body lift from the ground, felt her windpipe crushed by the strength of no human hand. “Jedi! Every time I think I’ve found the last of your treasonous kind, I’m proven wrong.” 

Rey would have attempted to respond, but it wasn’t possible. She resisted the urge to clutch at her throat.

“I’ll leave you whole for now, but only to learn who taught you. You’re too young to have been a proper initiate. And too…undisciplined.”

Rey didn’t like the sound of “whole”, implying there was a non-whole state in which she’d eventually find herself. He released her and she dropped to the floor. She grabbed for her lightsaber and ignited it. 

“Fool,” Vader said, pity almost evident in his tone as he reached out a hand. With little effort, he called the lightsaber to him. It leapt from her hand, extinguishing as it went. “Your powers are no match for - ”

Rey looked up as he stopped short mid-sentence when the lightsaber hit his gloved palm.

“Where did you get this lightsaber?”

“Here and there,” Rey replied automatically, before realizing her mouth had got ahead of her brain. “I mean - ”

“_Where_,” he said again, the pressure on her windpipe resuming. “This weapon. Do you know its history? Who gave it to you?”

“Stole it,” she choked out, not sure herself if she thought that was a lie. “But I know. It was yours.” The last word came out as a wheeze.

“What happened to it?” he asked, releasing her again. A note of curiosity had entered his voice. “It’s been rebuilt. _Sloppily_.” 

Rey coughed, regaining her breath. “It’s been through a lot. Your grandson and I - ”

“My - what did you say?” If he could have been making eye contact, he would have been.

Rey wasn’t sure how to bring him up to speed so she figured she’d better just get past the obvious before he started choking her again. “Look, this is a vision. We’re in a vision. You’ve been dead for decades. You died on the second Death Star. Do you know that?” 

Vader froze. He looked around the room. Rey waited. The temperature in the room rose perceptibly. 

“Yes. Yes, you’re right. This holding cell is from the first Death Star. It was destroyed. I know it was destroyed. We changed the design for the second. Bench against that wall.” He pointed right. 

“I knew it wasn’t one I’d seen before.”

“But close enough that you apparently knew how to overload the door.”

“I was once locked overnight in a cell on a crashed Star Destroyer, my food and water outside the door. I tore that room apart. I learned a lot.” 

Vader crossed the room and sat down on the bench. “I have a grandson.” 

“Yes.”

“This is a Force focus on Mustafar, yes? Where you came, to enter this vision.”

“Yes.” 

“I died here. He tried to come here. I couldn’t reach him, but I felt his heart. I wondered what he was.” 

“Yes. He told me he tried, but he couldn’t focus. But didn’t you die on the second Death Star? I’d heard - ”

“Darth Vader’s artificial body breathed its last on the Death Star,” he said, bitterness so thick in his voice it made her shiver. “Anakin Skywalker’s life ended on this spot, and what little was left of him was reanimated into an abomination.” He paused a long time. “I no longer consider that to have been a life.”

“Kylo Ren said this was a focus of the Dark Side of the Force. But it isn’t, is it? It’s more complicated than that.” 

“Yes. There is no alignment here. This is mine. I made it. I made it when I died, and there was so much more to me than light or dark then. I was whole, and a man. The Dark here called to him, and he tried to follow its threads, but the energy here is not dark energy, so he could not. It is only mine. It was created in a pivotal moment for me, a test I failed. This site marks my failure. I appear here as Vader, not as Skywalker, as a reminder to myself and those who would come to find me, of my inadequacy, at the moment when the galaxy hung in the balance.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“What do you have to be sorry for? You merely came to learn.” 

“I didn’t mean to disturb your - well, it doesn’t sound like rest. Your solitude.”

“Too late for that. Tell me about my grandson.”

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but he’s terrible.”

Rey jumped as Darth Vader burst out in a sincere-sounding, surprised bark of a laugh, shaking his head. “Of course he is. Ha! Of course he is.” 

“He’s very powerful. You’ve felt his signature in the Force, I guess, since he’s been here, so you know. He’s trying to lead. He hasn’t had very good advice, and he doesn’t know how to use the power he has. He thinks he can bring order to the galaxy.”

“Kill him,” Vader said sincerely. “He can’t. It is folly. I speak from experience. Cut him down.” 

“Oh, I’ve tried. That’s how I broke your lightsaber. He’s too strong, and I’m barely trained.” 

“But there’s something else. Something brought you here. You didn’t come here to kill him.”

Rey suddenly remembered what Kylo had mentioned about Anakin Skywalker’s birth. “Is it true you had no father? That your father was the Force?”

“As far as I ever was given to know. Over the years I developed a suspicion, more and more strongly, that it was not the will of the Force that I come into being, but rather the Force’s compensation for meddling by a powerful Force user. But I shall never know for sure.” 

“What do you mean?”

“The Sith did discover some abilities, to manipulate life and death, or so they claimed. Darth Sidious, my master, never revealed the extent of those abilities to me. But I suspected over the years that he had something to do with my conception. I never understood exactly what. He didn’t father me in the traditional way, but he implied a few times that his volition was - involved. Or his master’s.” 

“Your grandson and I suspect that the Force may be trying to - to create offspring again, using both of us. But I don’t think it ever crossed our minds that it was anything other than the will of the Force itself interfering with us. Are you saying there are other entities that can project their intentions along the Force so powerfully? That this is something we might have some chance to fight?”

“I do not know. I wish I could tell you more. I left the path of the Light, destroying everything I loved, to learn these perverse abilities; in the end, I never did. My master kept them from me to the last. He knew that if I ever came to know, I would strike him down with my next breath. The next move of my hand would end him.” His strong right hand made a furious fist in the air.

Rey was impressed with Vader’s ability to sustain narrative drama, but it made for awkward conversation. How did one respond to that? She opted for silence, then realized perhaps she was with someone who could give her the answers to some other questions they’d been pondering. “If I wanted to go deeper - to journey to a place where I could draw close to the Force, and understand its nature better - would you know where I could go to do that?”

She was surprised again when Darth Vader let out a deep and hearty laugh. “I doubt you will find another person, living or dead, who’s had as many strange Force nexus encounters as I have.” It was as though two people shared the black body armor - a bitter, angry, melodramatic old man, and a funnier and more personable younger one, long accustomed to keeping his own counsel. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you where to access the place where I had the deepest of of them. Mortis - it will come to you, if it wants you. But there are others, many others. Many ancient temples, built over ancient seats of power.”

“It will come to you, if it wants you?”

“I cannot tell you more than that. Mortis came to me. Perhaps if you went together, you would discover it, if the Force is indeed attempting what you believe. Or if someone or something is attempting it, through the Force. Perhaps the Force will seek you as its ally, to thwart this design. Perhaps that was what it was attempting with me, so long ago. Perhaps it wished to warn me of the further manipulations in store for me.” He was silent for a long time, breathing. “Please, I ask you again, tell me about my grandson.”

And they sat and talked, about Vader’s past and Rey’s, about the desert, and hunger, and the Force, and Kylo Ren, and at some point the vision faded away, and Rey found herself on the round island of black rock surrounded by churning red, smoke, and ash, legs crossed, alone. He had never apologized for trying to choke her. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Kylo embark on a quest, and meet a stranger on Dagobah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I somehow managed to skip pasting over the final planned scene for the previous chapter, so if this chapter seems a bit...odd and/or extra-long, you caught me. Probably in a couple weeks I'll move the first scene back where it was supposed to be originally.

As Rey communed with his grandfather, Kylo Ren sat in his office, translating ancient Jedi texts. He’d actually seen a couple of these books before, back at school, but the others were new to him. However, Rey hadn’t been wrong about largely dismissing their usefulness, at least for their purposes. They were heavy on philosophy and light on star maps. Still, he fought through his boredom, hoping to learn something useful. His brows knit with effort, tongue slightly protruding from his lips in concentration, he sat with flimsi and pen and scratched out sentence after sentence in neat Aurebesh. 

Rey burst in, startling him so thoroughly he jumped and dropped his pen. “Well, I can tell you right now where you get your taste for melodrama,” she said without preamble. “That grandfather of yours is something  _else_ . But he was just who we needed to talk to.” 

“What?” he stammered. “What happened?”

“That Force nexus isn’t so much a generic Force nexus. It’s where Anakin Skywalker died - or whatever - where his biological body was mutilated so thoroughly that he got put in the big, you know,” she stood up straight and tall and squared her shoulders, and gestured at her torso, where the flashing light grid would be. “The armor…thing.” 

“I see.”

“Anyway, I’ve just spent who knows how long chatting with him. Get anything out of those texts?”

“What did he _say_?”

“I mean, lots of angry oaths of vengeance and long-dormant vendettas were elaborated on at length, but I guess the most useful thing I learned is that apparently there are just loads of these Force-strong places around - but he says that the real ticket is to fly around in a spaceship until some mythic realm called Mortis comes to us, maybe, possibly, he thinks.” 

“Comes to us?”

“He is of the opinion that it may not be the Force per se manipulating us, but rather some ultra-powerful dead Sith projecting that power from beyond the grave? Or perhaps a living one, doing the same. It’s unclear if he thinks this because he hates said dead Sith and wants vengeance, or if that’s actually at all what’s going on. In any case, he thinks that if that _is_ what’s going on, then the Force may want to intervene, and that the best way to solicit that sort of intervention is to fly around the galaxy visiting crumbling Jedi and Sith temples and historic sites and hope we attract its attention. Show it we mean business, sort of thing.”

“Are you _sure_ that’s what he said?” 

“I’m paraphrasing a bit, there was a lot more talk about ‘striking them down’ and ‘taking one’s revenge’ and a lengthy side excursion about Obi-wan Kenobi, whoever that is, but I believe that was the gist, yes.”

Kylo heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t have time for this sort of thing. I’m Supreme Leader, I can’t just - disappear on a quest for who knows how long.”

“You’re Supreme Leader, who’s stopping you? Oh, is that Hux character going to stage a coup while you’re out?” Rey knew this was the sort of teasing that would guarantee he came along. She did not know Kylo Ren’s day-to-day life well at all, but she knew that the implication that he made any choice out of fear of Armitage Hux would guarantee his compliance.

He pressed his lips together, clearly hating how simple that had made his decision, then said, “Very well. I don’t know what sorts of properties indicate the presence of an active Force focus in a location, but I  _am_ familiar with the locations of some Jedi and Sith temples, though they’re mostly ruins. Shall we come up with an itinerary?” He retrieved a holodisc which projected a map of the galaxy and turned his sheet of flimsi over to take notes on the other side.

“Do you write by hand just to show off?”

“What?”

“I mean, is it an intimidation thing, knowing how few people can write, that you seem to do it all the time?”

Kylo looked genuinely perplexed. “That’s how I remember things I’m thinking.”

“I mean, everyone else just dictates to a recorder or a droid.”

“I don’t like droids. And you never know who’s listening.”

“Ah, a paranoia thing, then.” 

“Call it what you like,” he replied airily. He titled the paper “Itinerary” and then started writing down the names of planets. “So. What do we know about places where the Jedi and the Sith have typically gone to commune with the Force? There are a few basics: Obviously the Imperial palace on Coruscant, but I can’t take you there. And there’s Ilum, where the Jedi used to go for saber crystals, mined to extinction as far as I know.” He pointed to the planets on the map as he said them. 

These were all news to Rey. “I’ve heard of one on Lothal,” she said, wincing at giving up the information but feeling obligated to contribute. 

“Lothal,” he repeated, writing it down. “But I’m sure that isn’t where Skywalker was holed up, and you still won’t tell me that.” Rey’s stony silence served as confirmation. “Oh, and of course the Massassi temple on Yavin IV, though nobody ever mentioned to me that there was a whiff of any sort of Force intensity there. I’ve heard tell of something or other on Dagobah, too - not a temple, but a power. It’s relatively near here, so we could make a stop and look around as we leave the system. From there we can head through the Core and make our way towards the other planets on our list.” 

“Can’t hurt to check it out.” Rey stopped to think. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I even asked - did you get anywhere with the Jedi texts while I was out?”

“You did ask, but nowhere interesting,” he replied. “I’d seen a few of them before, at school. But in general they’re more philosophy and religion than roadmaps.”

Rey sighed. “Sounds like the Jedi.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the last Jedi these days?”

“Who even knows what that means anymore. But I suppose if there’s a last Jedi, I’m it - for what little that’s worth. Darth Vader tried to kill me, thinking I was one, so I must be playing the role fairly convincingly.” 

“Hmph,” Kylo Ren grunted, visibly trying not to be jealous that after he’d spent so many years chasing the legacy of Vader, Vader had just opted to spend the afternoon in pleasant conversation with his sworn enemy, or whatever it was Rey was to him these days. “Are you ready to leave?”

“Sure, if you’ll just hand me back those books I’ll put them in my X-wing so I don’t forget them later on.” Rey didn’t trust that she’d ever see them again if she left them anywhere other than her own locked vehicle. “I assume you’ve got faster ships.”

“We aren’t piling into that X-wing, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Right. We have to stick together, in case Mortis comes to call.”

#

Kylo Ren owned a  _most_ gorgeous Nubian starship. Rey felt vaguely self-conscious even stepping foot in such a fancy conveyance and carefully scraped her boots at the bottom of the ramp. The interior had every option added on, and she could tell from a mere glance at the panel that despite its sleek silver exterior the thing was fairly bristling with shields and firepower. She involuntarily let out an impressed whistle.

“Not too shabby, yeah?” Kylo said with a grin, sounding boyish for a moment, almost like his father. “It’s an updated replica of Darth Vader’s. I commissioned it last year. Beats the hell out of an ancient starfighter.”

“Knew a guy once who said things like, ‘She may not look like much, kid, but she’s got it where it counts,’ implication being that appearances can be deceiving when it comes to starships, just like anything else.”

He made a sour, frustrated face. Rey knew it had been cruel to throw his father back at him - he so rarely looked happy or proud and connecting over his undeniably choice ride might have been a welcome opportunity to thin the tension between them, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. “You’ll see,” he grumbled. “Appearances are  _not_ deceiving when it comes to the  _Needle_ .” 

“The _Needle_?”

“I didn’t name it,” he muttered. “When you buy a custom ship from the Nubian Design Collective, they tell you what it’s called when they deliver it. There’s a whole ceremony.”

“Interesting. I like it, actually,” she said, an olive branch. “I’d like the grand tour, once we’re off the ground.” 

Takeoff was smooth as butter. He became more animated again as he showed her around, pointing out combat features, subtle safety improvements to the standard model, and the luxe living quarters. He was acting almost human. Rey was relieved to learn there were three bedrooms with a fresher attached to each. She didn’t  _think_ Kylo would have taken a ship with only one sleeping room on purpose, but it occurred to her that he might have done it without thinking about it, so unaccustomed was he to traveling with others.

“This galley is absurd,” she pointed out, sitting down at a small table in the corner. “I’ve seldom seen a bigger kitchen than this in a real house, let alone a starship. Can you even cook?”

“Of course I can cook,” he said disdainfully, taking the seat across from her.

Rey scoffed. “What, Corellian delight?” Corellian delight was a slang term across the galaxy for a dish made by heating an amalgamation of leftovers and trimmings in a pan until they formed a mysterious, theoretically nutritious slurry. There were aspects of Corellian culture that many people prized, but Corellian cuisine was not known for its sophistication.

He scoffed right back. “You’ll see, I can cook. We’ll need someone who can, given we don’t know how long we’ll be gone. Unless you’re hiding culinary talents?”

Rey, whose culinary talents extended to adding water to ration portions, shook her head. “Where’d you learn?”

“I’ll have you know I’ve had several excellent teachers. But if one person had to get credit, it would have to be Chewbacca,” he completed more quietly. 

“Huh,” Rey replied. “Okay, I’ll concede that you probably can cook. Better than me, anyway.”

“Of course I can.” 

Rey didn’t know what to say next. She felt crowded at the too-small table across from him. She knew intellectually that he wasn’t that big, but his presence seemed to take up half the room or more. He felt at home on this starship, clearly, more so than in his castle. This was a man who’d grown up with a father who didn’t feel comfortable in a dwelling unless it could get him off planet at a moment’s notice, and it showed.

“Can you play pazaak?” he asked suddenly.

Rey snorted. “What, like an old uncle?” She looked at him. “You’re serious! You don’t play sabacc like a normal person?”

“Anyone can play sabacc,” he said haughtily. “Pazaak takes a higher intellect.” He slid open a drawer in the wall and took out a deck of cards.

“Oh, come off it. It’s not as though they’re even that different. You shuffle, I’ll deal. Senate rules?”

“Scavenger-fugitive-Jedi-knights don’t play Nar Shaddaa rules? What sort of underground figure are you?” he said, effecting a suggestive wink.

Rey could feel herself blush scarlet. “Ugh, don’t be a sleemo. This ship isn’t big enough for that kind of humor.”

“Who said I was joking,” he grumbled, shuffling and cutting. They had time for a few games before the proximity alert for Dagobah.

#

“Well, this is…damp,” Rey said, pulling a boot from the mud. “Sorry in advance about the muck I’m liable to track into your pristine ship.”

“Ah, I didn’t show you the sonic boot cleaner,” he said.

“You’re joking. There isn’t a sonic boot cleaner.”

“There is,” he calmly asserted. “So nobody tracks muck into my pristine ship.”

There was rustling behind them - something large. Both turned on a dime and reached for lightsabers, but didn’t ignite them. They were just in time to see a large, winged reptile take off into the trees. 

“So, what exactly did you hear about Dagobah, anyway?” Rey asked.

“My mother mentioned it to me. Skywalker jetted off to do some kind of Jedi mumbo-jumbo - her words - after the Battle of Hoth. I guess he had some kind of vision here that really rattled him, and he told her about it later.”

“I see. I don’t suppose he mentioned to your mother where exactly on the planet he had this vision?”

“If he did, which I doubt, she didn’t share it with me.” 

Rey heaved a great sigh. “I  _hate_ having to trust in the Force. I know we’re supposed to, but really. It’s very difficult. Especially now.”

“I know.”

They tromped in silence, smelling, listening. 

“I don’t feel any Force presence. But I do feel something. I’ve never been on such an _alive_ planet, if you know what I mean. It’s overwhelming. Mostly in a good way, but - not entirely.” Rey shivered. Definitely not entirely.

“I feel it too. Not hostile, not friendly, just…”

“We don’t matter to this planet. It’s not a planet for sentients.” Then she heard a loud snap and a shout, and when she turned around, Kylo Ren was no longer behind her. “Ben!” she yelled in a panic.

“I’m okay,” she heard. “I’m down here.”

“Down where?” she ventured, stepping cautiously in the direction of his voice. “Did you fall?”

“I’m in a hole.” A pause, and a scrabbling sound. “I think I can climb out.” The sound of a large quantity of dirt falling. “Belay that. Could I get an assist?”

“Once I find your hole, absolutely,” Rey said, wondering if it would be cool or weird to lift him out with the Force. 

“Actually, now that my eyes are used to the dark, this might be a tunnel. Might lead somewhere interesting.”

“Don’t go alone!”

“How have you not found me yet? I wasn’t that far behind you.”

“I don’t know. The entrance must be hidden.”

“I didn’t see it either,” he said ruefully. “Obviously. Here, let me - ” He broke off and Rey saw a huge cloud of dirt rise and swirl upward from a small hill a few feet to her left, propelled by the Force. 

“Showoff,” she muttered, thinking of how hard it would be for her to lift so much dirt all at once with the Force as she scrambled over vines and rocks to get to the tunnel entrance. She peeked her head over the edge. He was still half buried in dirt. “Are you sure you want to explore the tunnel? Do you have a good feeling about it?”

“I don’t trust my feelings that much, these days,” he said. “It has a fresh smell. It’s worth a look.” 

Rey scrambled down into the hole. “Yup, looks like a tunnel to me, too,” she said. “Do you have a light rod?” He unholstered his lightsaber with a pointed look. “No way. Your lightsaber is mental. You’re going to light something on fire by accident with that unstable crossguard. Let’s just use mine.”

“I’ve been using this lightsaber for _years_, you know,” he grumbled, holstering it again. “Built it myself, unlike some people I could name.”

“I think I can at this point be said to have built this one mostly myself, given the state in which we left it after our last encounter.”

They entered the tunnel in silence, Rey’s saber the only light. It was cool inside, and less muddy than expected - a rocky tunnel rather than something dug into the dirt. The tunnel led down, a gentle slope, with a little trickle of water down the middle. It didn’t branch.

“I wonder how this tunnel was formed,” Rey said.

“I was thinking the same thing. Nobody dug it. It feels like a lava tube to me, but nothing else I can spot about the geological phenomena here indicates Dagobah had volcanic activity.”

“A lava tube?”

“Sometimes subterranean lava flows that are cut off or diverted leave an underground tube behind where the hotter lava flowed past lava that had already cooled into harder rock,” he explained. “There are extensive cave systems on Mustafar on the parts of the planet where the volcanoes are no longer active.”

“I see. And they’re like this?”

“Not exactly. But closer than any other sort of cave or tunnel I’ve been in.”

“Are you someone who’s been in a wide variety of caves and tunnels?”

“No.” His voice sounded angry. He picked up his pace, brushing past her on the left.

It occurred to Rey that perhaps he thought she had been making a very subtle comment on his love life. “Just wondering!” she clarified. He didn’t reply. “Hey, slow down!”

“Keep up!” he retorted. “I’d like to get back to the _Needle_ before we lose the light.”

“Tyrant,” she muttered under her breath, walking faster. 

Then she noticed a blue light further down the tunnel. At first she thought it was the light from her saber reflecting off something in the distance, but gradually it resolved into a figure. “Do you see that?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied. “I think it’s a Force ghost.”

“A _what_,” she hissed.

“Mm,” said the figure, a wizened little pointy-eared thing the size of a child. “Two failed padawans of my final padawan, I see. Come to visit me in my retirement on Dagobah, have you? Late you are.”

“Master Yoda,” Kylo said obsequiously. “It’s an honor to meet you at last.”

“Fool me you cannot, young Solo. Your signature in the Force, conflicted it is. Jedi pieties, a waste of your breath they are.”

“I like him!” Rey exclaimed, whacking Kylo with the back of her hand.

“He can hear you,” Kylo muttered. 

“I like you! What did you say your name was?”

“Yoda, I was in life. Now, a name, little meaning it carries. Swim I do now in the waters of the Force, taking sometimes a name, sometimes a shape, sometimes none of these.” 

Rey didn’t know how to respond to that, and fell back on manners. “Well, the pleasure’s all mine.” 

“Mm,” he hummed again. “Quite a pair you are. Tell me, what quest brings you to Dagobah? Surely not some wrinkled old Jedi master’s company seek you here?”

“Nothing so specific,” Rey replied. “We have a complaint to lodge with - with the Force, we think - and we’re trying to figure out the best way to get its attention.” 

“A grave misunderstanding of the Force this is,” Yoda frowned. “The Force’s attention you have already, as do all its children.”

“Well, we want to ask it some questions, then,” Rey clarified, annoyed that Kylo had decided to shut his big dumb mouth for once and make her do all the talking.

“Ah! Questions for the Force you have. I see, I see. The answers you seek, elusive they may be. Perhaps find them here you will, yes?”

“That would be very convenient,” Rey said politely. “If you think you can help.” Rey had been taught never to trust a ghost, but given that she seemed to have no choice but to be in conversation with this one, she felt the nicer she was, the better.

Yoda cackled. “Oh, no no, answers I seldom give. If speak to your Master Luke you do again, tell you he will. Questions, more questions, are what you get, when answers you seek from Yoda. Advice I dispense, but not always the advice you desire. ‘Fresh vegetables, you should try,’ when directions to a place you ask. ‘Round the corner, try looking,’ when the time for late meal comes around. Very annoying, mm, very troublesome,” he shook his head in mock sympathy. “My padawans, ah, a trial I was to them.” 

“I see.”

“But Yoda is not the only thing on Dagobah, mm? Other powers you will find here, other places, yes. Older places even than I, on this planet, so steeped in the Living Force it is.”

“Where can we find those places?”

“In your hearts, look first,” he said, infuriatingly. “Your feelings, guide you they will, if answers Dagobah holds for you, as well it may. And if not, in the past, interesting experiences I have had on Moraband. Yes, some answers did I find there, though not without price. Not without pain.”

“Moraband?” Kylo said, finally rejoining the conversation. “The Sith homeworld?”

“Ah, a favorite destination of yours it is, young Skywalker?”

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped.

“When almost a millennium you have seen, call people as you see fit, you shall as well.”

“It’s _inaccurate_.”

“Ah, perhaps, the records on Coruscant, agree with me they will not. But here, here,” he pointed to his head and his chest, “you carry your grandfather with you. His battles, his struggles. Match yours they do not, but oh, young Skywalker, rhyme they do. Afflicted with dreams you have been, yes? If the shade of your grandfather you encounter in your travels, these dreams you should discuss. Tales he will have to tell you. A mistake it was to tell him to disregard them. Significant they were beyond what we understood, I think.” 

“Can you tell me? In case I don’t get a chance to talk to him?”

“Not my story to share this is. Not enough about young Anakin and his burdens did I learn, before the end. Blind I was.”

The light in the cave began to fade, and Yoda’s edges blurred. “Is there anything else in this cave?” Rey thought to shout.

“Search your feelings, young Rey,” Yoda said as he disappeared. 

“What a _frustrating_ person,” Rey said with a petulant stomp after the last trace of him had gone. “Or whatever he was.”

“Now you see where Luke gets it, though,” Kylo pointed out. “That annoying ‘search your feelings’ stuff is all plagiarized.”

“Pfft,” Rey laughed. “I can’t believe he wouldn’t even tell us if there’s any reason to keep exploring this cave.”

“Oh, searching your feelings isn’t helping?” The sarcasm was so thick Rey felt if she moved her lightsaber down she might slice it in two. “Say what you will about the Dark side of the Force, but at least it’s not so _whimsical_.”

“I’m beginning to understand the appeal,” Rey admitted. “But in this case, it seems clear we should take a minute to meditate on whether to continue into this cave. He didn’t give us an answer, but he told us there was an answer to seek in the Force. It’s better than nothing.”

“And he did give us that tip on Moraband,” Kylo grudgingly agreed. “We can’t call Yoda entirely useless, much as I may want to. Though I wonder what _he_ was doing on Moraband. What would a Jedi master possibly have had to learn from the Sith homeworld?”

“I didn’t even know the Sith _had_ a homeworld. Do the Jedi?”

“No. It’s…can we talk about it back on the _Needle_? I meant it about losing the light. We didn’t bring supplies to spend the night in this cave, and I would rather never find out what sorts of bugs come out at night on Dagobah.” 

It hadn’t even occurred to Rey to think about supplies. Or local insects. “All right, meditation then,” she agreed, taking a seat and crossing her legs. Kylo assumed the same pose. 

As he closed his eyes and began to meditate, Rey studied him, trying to understand where he aligned with the Force. She’d forced herself to think of him as a confirmed initiate of the Dark side, after what had happened after he’d killed Snoke - but Yoda had said there was conflict, still, after all this time. And remembering what it had been like to be in a room with Darth Vader, well - he wasn’t like that. No sense of wholeness or acceptance, or even coherence. There was always tension, with Kylo Ren - always a sense that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. 

What had he been doing as Supreme Leader lately, anyway? Why had he been just kicking around the palace by himself when she’d come to call? Why had he been able to jet off with her at a moment’s notice? As she’d said - shouldn’t he be busier?

An interesting conundrum, she thought; one to ponder later. She closed her eyes and silenced the buzz of thoughts and questions, gently, and reached out. 

At first, she felt nothing. Then, suddenly, her eyes snapped open. Kylo had clearly also just gotten the message, urgency written all over his face. “Run!” she screamed gratuitously, scrambling to her feet and dashing as fast as she could for the exit. He was right behind her. The cave began to rumble, quietly first, then loudly.

“I’ll boost you out, then you help lift me with the Force,” he shouted after her. “We better hope the kriffing _gigantic worm_ that lives in this tunnel isn’t going to follow us out!” 

For that was what the Force had intimated to them both, and not a moment too soon. The walls of the tunnel began to shake. Rey resisted the temptation to look back and see if it had come into visual range yet. “I see daylight!” she cried. 

“It’s gaining,” he coughed. Dust and dirt were falling from the top of the tunnel onto them as they ran. “This thing is _fast_.”

“Boost me boost me oh kriff I see it,” Rey babbled incoherently, seeing a head fully the height of the tunnel that had ample room for both of them to stand coming up impossibly quickly behind them. Kylo knit his fingers together and Rey stepped up, able to get just high enough to grab a thick, solid root at the top of the hole. The worm was too fast, though, for her to get Kylo out before it reached him. 

Its head was grey and featureless. He ignited his lightsaber and slashed indiscriminately, trying to slow it down. It bashed against him, knocking him down against the pile of dirt he’d had fall on him earlier, slamming the wind out of him, then hit him again while he was down. His saber fell to the ground, extinguished. Rey pushed away her panic and focused. 

“If you can hear me, I’m lifting you out,” she called down. He didn’t respond. The worm continued to grind his body into the dirt as she grasped at him with the Force, trying to get him out of the way of the creature. He was clearly still alive, but she suspected he might have broken a bone. Or several. 

For a moment, the Force didn’t respond to her. She struggled to remain calm. Then she felt her power close around his body, and it began to budge. It felt like the longest few seconds of her life, waiting to see if he’d move out of the way before the worm landed another blow. 

It happened, but not quite fast enough. The worm hit his left hand and she heard a sickening crunch as at least one finger broke against the rocky wall of the tunnel. And then he was up in the air above the cave, and safe, and the worm retreated. Rey set him down on the ground as gently as she could and heaved a huge breath of relief, allowing herself to rejoice in their survival before taking stock of the damage.

She was fine. A scrape on her knuckle from the root she’d grabbed didn’t seem worth remarking on. But Kylo had certainly broken some bones, and Rey’s Force healing skills were basically nonexistent, and it was a long walk back to the  _Needle_ . They’d carried an emergency medical pack, at his insistence, for which she was very grateful. 

She felt at his fingers. Only the middle finger of his left hand felt broken. She set and splinted it and applied a bacta patch, then hesitated a moment before trying to discover whether any other bones had been broken. She was sure there was some Jedi way to feel the injuries of his body without undressing him, but nobody had ever taught it to her. She blushed, thinking about what he’d want her to do. Would he want to be awake? Would he trust her to take off his clothes? Did she even know how to remove the high-tech armor he wore? And her mouth went dry as she thought about the last time she’d seen his bare chest, under such different circumstances. 

Rey shook herself. “And you called  _him_ a sleemo,” she whispered to herself. She opted to feel around on his torso before trying to undress him, reasoning that if she could make an educated guess that his ribs were intact, it would probably be better to revive him and help him walk back to the  _Needle_ where they could get cleaned up and use the much better medical facilities available on board. She pressed, pressed, pressed along his ribs, feeling heartened that they felt like solid bone where she’d seen the worm hit him hardest. 

Then she pressed one that didn’t feel all that solid and he woke with a harsh intake of breath. “Whoof! That is  _broken_ ,” he gasped, as she drew back in surprise. 

“Sorry,” she squeaked. “That’s what I was trying to - well, obviously - ”

“Did that thing follow us out?”

“I don’t think we’d be here talking if it had. I was worried for a minute it had snapped your spine down there,” she said, giving voice to a fear she hadn’t let herself consciously think until it came out.

“No such luck,” he grunted, trying to get up. “Help?” 

“Best to get back to the ship. Right,” she agreed, rising to her feet and offering a hand. 

“Hells, does that smart,” he hissed as he stood. 

“Can you walk?”

“Think so. Might need to lean on you, though; that’s a rebroken bone and the pain is radiating out through the whole right half of my body, and this rough terrain is going to be brutal,” he explained. 

“Of course,” she replied, offering an arm. “Oh - just one thing.” She helped him steady himself against a tree, then walked back to the hole and summoned his lightsaber, clipping it to her belt next to her own. And they picked their way across the verdant landscape in silence, focusing on the task at hand as the sun set behind them. 


	4. Chapter 4

“You weren’t wrong about the bugs,” Rey admitted as they threw their filthy boots into the sonic boot cleaner. “_Disgusting_.” 

“Medbay. Now,” he said in reply, padding into the ship in socks. “Please.”

Rey spares a wistful glance at the sonic boot cleaner, with three minutes left in its cycle, feeling strange about walking around Kylo Ren’s ship in bare, sweaty, dirty feet. He was already stripping off his armor and dropping pieces of it as he walked, so things weren’t liable to be any less awkward as the minutes ticked by. She squared her jaw and followed.

By the time he made it to the medbay he was in long thin body-stocking pants and not much else. His torso was a bruised mess, with more scars criss-crossing its surface than she remembered. She sucked her breath in. “Don’t suppose you have a bacta tank on board?”

“Half tank,” he replied. “Through there.”

“Oh, brilliant,” she replied, brightening considerably. She’d said it almost as a joke.

“Haven’t had great luck healing this rib with bacta in the past, though,” he pointed out softly, clearly making a conscious effort to regulate the volume of his voice. “I’m in no shape to Force heal myself. Would you mind - ”

Rey pressed her lips together. “Nobody ever taught me,” she admitted. “I’m sorry.”

The silence that followed felt very, very long. “Right. Well.” He sucked a breath in through his teeth. “Let me show you how to use that bacta tank, then.”

She had never seen a half tank before. It folded down from the wall. It was really more like a bacta chamber - it consisted of a box about a meter long attached to a padded table. Kylo slid his body through it, positioning it so that it covered his neck and torso. “I can operate it myself, but you may as well learn how in case you ever need to put me in it when I’m not conscious,” he explained. Rey stopped herself from reacting; did he think they’d be traveling together that long? “First hit the button just there with ‘isk’ on it.” She hit it and thin, flexible plastic panels slid out of the top, forming a barrier. “Now the ‘besh’ button. For bacta.”

A spraying noise began and vapor filled the tank. “Ahh,” he sighed. “Better already. Nice work on my finger, by the way.”

“Thanks. That isn’t like any bacta I’ve ever seen,” Rey remarked, mostly so she wouldn’t be tempted to complain about the smell.

“It’s aerosolized. Uses a fraction of what they need for a traditional tank, so I don’t have to carry as much. Of course, it’s not going to cure me of anything life-threatening - but for minor injuries, it’s adequate, and as you can see the whole thing folds into a wall.”

“Very clever.” Rey picked at a torn cuticle. “While you’re in there, mind telling me where you keep your bacta mini-strips?”

“Oh. You’re hurt?”

“Barely,” she clarified. “Just this.” She held up her torn and bleeding knuckle. “Really, it’s nothing - just want to get it healing.”

“Of course. Fourth drawer from the left on the wall just there.” He nodded to his left.

“Thanks.” She rinsed her hand in the sink, then carefully covered the scrape. “I wish I knew how to heal your rib. And - thanks for boosting me out first.” 

He didn’t respond. When she turned around, he had fallen asleep.

#

Rey excused herself to her quarters to use the fresher and have a nap. Her growling stomach woke her up. It was dark outside, and a quick look in on Kylo showed he was still sleeping in the bacta vapor chamber. She went off to poke around the galley, hoping there was something she could eat without too much trouble or noise. 

After a whole lot of puzzling over unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, Rey found a stash of recently expired ration bars at the back of a cupboard, and inhaled three. It was a brand she’d always preferred on the staler side anyway. Once she’d eaten and had some water, she felt ready for anything. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much for her to do. She wished she’d brought the Jedi texts, but they were back on Mustafar. After a brief search of the common areas for reading material left her empty-handed and feeling like a snoop, she went back to her quarters, worried about Kylo and feeling more and more embarrassed and resentful that “Knight Rey,” the alleged Last Jedi, had never even been taught how to heal a broken bone with the Force.

“Meditation, then, I suppose,” she muttered, leaving the door to her quarters open so she could hear any sounds that might emerge from the medbay. She sat and closed her eyes, allowing her surroundings to fall away.

Meditating on Dagobah was strange. Reaching out to the Force was almost too easy. It felt like climbing a staircase and thinking there was one more step, then realizing with a stumble that she had already arrived at the top - the usual step up wasn’t there, it was more like falling headfirst into the currents of the Force. There was no tranquility to be found. Peace, yes, but a peace without calm.

Rey found herself almost involuntarily reaching in the direction of Darth Vader again. She had given up on trying to contact Luke in the Force; he had appeared to her briefly, once or twice, but it was clear he operated on his own schedule and wasn’t at her beck and call. But perhaps Anakin would want to talk. Or Darth Vader would. He seemed like someone who had a lot of things to say that nobody had been willing to listen to for a very long time. 

Just when she was about to give up, feeling that the wildness of Dagobah was too much noise for her to meditate through, she caught the metallic whiff of cold that she’d felt on Mustafar. 

“You again?” said a tall young man in dark clothing with a wild mane of hair and a scar that reminded her of Kylo’s. 

“Anakin Skywalker?” she replied, already sure it was.

“Right, yes,” he laughed. “You met me in the suit. Yup, this is me.” He held out a hand to shake, like a politician. She took it and dropped it, feeling unnatural. 

“Nice to meet you for real,” she smiled. “But you remember me?”

“It’s all the same to me. I don’t fully understand how I manifest in these visions.”

“So you show up like this for lots of people?”

“Oh, no no. I’m very bored in the afterlife. Not many nice girls meditating on their wishes to talk to Darth Vader, for some reason. Nor anyone else, really. Nobody _savory_, anyway.”

“You seem different, though, since last time.”

“I know. I should have been more precise. It isn’t all the same to _me_ \- I mean, I have all the memories, but my mind feels different in the suit. It’s harder and colder and crueler. This,” he gestured, head to toe, “is how I see myself, when I have a choice. This is the freest I ever was, not that that’s saying much, and the happiest. But I don’t always have a choice.”

“I…see.”

“You don’t,” he shook his head, “but that’s okay. I don’t either.” 

“Can you see my surroundings?”

“No,” he said, “but I can feel them in the Force. Are you on Felucia? It feels like Felucia.” Rey made a mental note to learn more about Felucia.

“Dagobah.”

“Dagobah,” he repeated, cocking his head. “What’s on Dagobah?”

“A kriffing _gigantic_ worm, for one thing, and visions of Yoda. I think he died here.”

“Yoda? Seriously?”

“Friend of yours?”

“Hardly,” he laughed. “Master’s master’s…master’s master, I think,” he counted them off on his fingers. “Similar to you, actually. He taught Luke, too. So he was your master’s master. So in a way, you’re my…Jedi auntie?” He laughed. “We were discouraged from thinking of Jedi lineages this way, but I think everyone secretly did.” 

Rey felt a deep pang of regret for all the things she’d never learned about the Jedi and about Luke. “Actually, I was wondering,” she said, feeling foolish. “Do you think you could teach me to Force heal?”

“My son never taught his last padawan to Force heal?”

Rey shook her head sadly. “No time. And your grandson is trying to sleep off a broken rib a couple of rooms that way.”

Anakin narrowed his eyes. “Leave it broken - just in case.”

“That’s cruel! In case of what?”

“Well, he sounds - unpredictable, and if I know one thing about the Dark side of the Force, it’s that it can stoke those unpredictable moods into violent action. Look, I like you, Rey. I want you to have power on your side. Keep that rib a bit iffy and if you need to incapacitate him, one good kick will do it.”

“But if we’re fighting side by side, a weakness like that is easy to exploit.”

“With an enemy who knows about it, sure.”

“Or an enemy that lands a lucky punch! It isn’t worth the risk. And besides - it wouldn’t be right.”

He let out a long, low whistle and shook his head. “Jedi idealism. Force help me, I almost missed it.”

“Will you teach me? Can you?”

“I’ll try. I don’t know if I can. I can at least tell you the theory, and you can try and take it from there. Or maybe your traveling companion remembers how, from his Jedi days, and can pick up where I leave off.”

“Did you know him then?”

“No,” he replied. “I was newer to death, then. I spent a very long time not sure how to control anything about how or when I appeared in the Force. Nobody helped me. I eventually got it figured out, as far as this goes.” He gestured at his body. “Dreams, meditations, visions - I can manifest, to some extent. But I still can’t appear like a ghost willy-nilly the way some Jedi can. I’ve done it, but not predictably. I’m clearly not managing it the same way they are. I don’t know if that way is shut to me. Perhaps it is.”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t intend to figure out how to do that. I was taught never to speak to ghosts.” 

“By whom?”

“It was common knowledge on Jakku. Ghosts lie, and they take things. They figure out what you need, and they take it, so you join them in the after.”

“But didn’t you just speak with Yoda?”

She suppressed a shudder. “Not by choice! And I don’t know whether to trust anything he said. He told us to go to some Sith homeworld. Does that sound like something a Jedi master would say, in earnest?”

“He told you to go to Moraband?”

“That’s the one,” she said, tapping her nose. “Why would a Jedi tell us to go there? But Kylo took it at face value.”

Anakin looked thoughtful. “I - hmm. In the darkest days of the war, Yoda went on a secret quest, against the wishes of the Jedi Council. He never trusted me, especially by then, although he wasn’t above using me to aid and abet his shenanigans. I don’t know if that’s where he went. But he came back changed. He definitely had some sort of encounter - I could feel it.”

“Well, maybe that was it. Maybe he was telling the truth, and his intentions were good. I don’t know. I just - I don’t trust ghosts.”

“Good thing I’m not one, then,” Anakin said, flashing her a grin that went straight to her heart. She didn’t know who Kylo Ren’s grandmother was or how Luke and Leia had come to be, but she felt as though she suddenly understood something deep about all the Skywalkers she’d met and the eventful and complicated lives they’d led. That soul-deep charisma drew you in like a steelpecker to a freshly crashed starship. It was dangerous. “Now how about that healing? Let’s see. Do you have any injuries right now you could practice on? Something minor?”

“I scraped my knuckle, but it’s had bacta on it for a bit - might be _too_ minor.” She took off the bacta strip to show him.

“No, that’s perfect. Even if you mess it up you’ll keep all your fingers.” Rey startled, but looked up to see that mischievous grin again. “Don’t worry. I’ve taught this to younglings, and nobody ever ended up worse off than they started. Now, with your other hand, hover over the injury. No, closer. There we go. Now focus, and breathe. Can you focus on the torn skin? Do you feel the rough edges, the _wrongness_ of that violation?”

Rey focused, and breathed. After a minute, she thought she understood what he meant. “Yes - the skin - it’s not in its proper place. It wants to go back, like elastex stretched too far.”

“Exactly. _Exactly_. Can you help it? What’s it missing?”

Rey felt for the answer, and faltered. “I - what do you mean?” she opened her eyes. “It can’t tell me.”

Anakin searched for the words. “What do you do best with the Force? What comes naturally for you?”

“Fighting,” she replied with a shrug. “Nothing is that natural, except fighting for my life.”

“You’re from Jakku.”

“Ever been there?”

“No,” Anakin owned, “but I know kids from desert planets. _Too_ well.” He sighed. “Imagine you’re away from home, walking, and your water is getting low. You thought you brought enough, but you’re still an hour out, and you’re no longer so sure. You’re spreading it thin, trying to conserve.” 

Rey’s eyes grew wide. “My skin! It’s doing that. It’s - you’re right. It’s doing that. It doesn’t know when it will get what it needs and it’s conserving its resources.”

“Right. You’ve got it.”

“But how can I give it those resources? What’s _its_ water?”

“It wants to tell you. Just open your heart, Rey. It _will_ tell you. And it will be something you can give. That’s the whole secret of Force healing. The Force contains what injuries need, almost always, except in very unusual cases. But you have to let the _injury_ tell you where to find it, just like when you fight, you let the battle tell you.”

“I’m not even aware I’m doing that!”

“But you are. Slow down and you’ll see. Spar with my grandson, and try to slow down. You’ll hear the whispers of the Force clear as a bell. And once you can really sense them you can train yourself not to _need_ to sense them, and then you’ll be _unstoppable_.”

“But I already don’t need to sense them.”

“It’s different, though. Right now you use the Force instinctively as you fight. That’s great - that’s Jedi Knight work already, don’t get me wrong. You’re doing fine. But there are next levels you can reach. If you deconstruct your fighting style, you’ll find them. It used to be that the whole Jedi curriculum was designed around that deconstruction, around building a fighting style for yourself that played to your instincts but also allowed you to transcend them, if you could - but that was, well, that was a long time ago.” 

“Can I try again? With my knuckle?”

“Of course.”

Rey closed her eyes and reached out her hand again. She felt her skin, yearning to be whole again. She felt the injury itself, and its relationship to the healthy skin around it. She felt the Force, impassive all around her, open to inquiry. And she - inquired. Just like that. And the Force answered. She opened her eyes as the skin closed.

“Well done,” Anakin breathed, his face inches above hers. 

“Thanks,” she whispered back. “You’re a good teacher.”

“Years of practice,” he said solemnly. “Rey, promise me something?”

“What?”

“Leave that rib broken. I know it offends your sensibilities, and I’m sure you could heal it for him now that you know how. Probably better than he’ll be able to do himself, for all you’re new at this. But - for me.” His voice was soft. “There’s still good in him. But there’s a lot other than good too. And you’ll encounter it, I’m afraid, before the end.”

Rey could do nothing but nod. 

“Promise?”

“I promise.” And the vision dissolved. 

#

Rey opened her eyes. “Felucia.” 

“Felicia?” she heard from the next room. Oh, good. He was awake.

“Felucia,” she repeated. “The planet.”

“What about it?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he said. “I don’t think I should rush into any melees for the next day or two, but the bacta helped. And the sleep.” Dreamless, Rey added mentally. Bacta induced dreamless sleep. She wondered if he’d used it to get some undisturbed shuteye in the past few months. Rather expensive way to get some rest in, but if his dreams were as bad as he’d said…

“I’m glad. I just had a vision, and while it wasn’t - there isn’t much to say about it,” she said, feeling guilty, “I think we should add Felucia to our list.” 

“All right,” Kylo shrugged. “I don’t know where that is, but we can find out.” He walked closer to her, and froze. “Tell me more about that vision.”

“Why?” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s private.”

“I feel something - strange.” He narrowed his eyes back. “You’re not telling me something.”

“There are a lot of things I don’t tell you.” 

“You’re not telling me something _specific_.” 

She felt a touch on her mind, and lashed out in the Force in response. “How  _dare_ you,”  Rey gasped.  Kylo took a step back, involuntarily. “After all we’ve been through together!”

“We have to trust each other. We _have_ to, Rey.” 

“Oh, and you tell me every single thing about yourself. Really!” She gritted her teeth. “What did _you_ see the last time the Force gave _you_ a vision? Keen to spill your guts about what you see in your dreams, Kylo Ren? Or should I just have a look?”

He took another step away from her. “All right, all right,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “Your mind just felt - different, in the Force. Unusual for you. I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

“So you _ask_. _Politely_,” she growled. “You don’t just try to _take it from my mind_.” 

“Force of habit,” he said apologetically. 

“That is so, _so_ far from an excuse.” She huffed. “Honestly. You know how violated I’ve felt, these past months. Why would you think that was acceptable? From you, of all people? Given how we met?”

“I was _trying_ to check on you. That’s all.”

She rolled her eyes, not wanting to hear another non-apology, certain that was all she’d hear while they remained on the subject. “Anyway. Felucia.”

“Right. Adding it to the list.” He went over to the star map. “It’s not far from Lothal - or from Moraband, for that matter. It seems like we ought to head in that general direction, and make decisions as we go. It’ll take a while, though - we’re very far out.”

Rey drifted over to the star map herself, examining their options. “It looks like it’ll be faster to go through the Core, as we’d planned. In terms of hyperspace routes, anyway. I know you said you didn’t want to stop on Coruscant, and I see why, but maybe we could make it work? It would be very useful to resupply there.” 

He winced. “No, I don’t think we can. I mean, I could go there without arousing suspicion, but you’d have to stay in the ship, well hidden - probably better hidden than I could manage on this ship, as it isn’t really built for smuggling. Certainly we couldn’t visit the temple. And without that, there are dozens of worlds where we could just as easily stop without so much - military presence.”

“Aren’t you Supreme Leader, though? Couldn’t you just stalk around there with me in a disguise, and if anyone asks you can say I’m your apprentice?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not? Don’t you just kill anyone who stands in your way? One imagines eventually people learn not to do that, correct?”

“You’d think.” He shook his head. “No, it’s not an option. I may be Supreme Leader, but on Coruscant…”

“On Coruscant, what?” Rey hoped this was the moment she’d finally come to understand exactly what was going on between Kylo Ren and the First Order.

“The Imperial Palace is the seat of the First Order _administrative_ apparatus. Supreme Leader is a _military_ role; at least, right now, for me, it’s a military role. I would not be entirely welcome to ‘stalk around,’ as you put it, waving my lightsaber around on Coruscant. It would upset the civilian government, and things with them are - delicate.”

“_Why_ are they delicate?”

He heaved a sigh and wiped his hand down his face as he continued. “Some of them don’t concede that succession of military leadership should be - managed - as I have managed it.”

“Ah. Some don’t recognize that Snoke’s murderer should be next on the throne?”

“_You’re_ Snoke’s murderer!”

“I _what_?”

Kylo Ren burst out laughing. “You didn’t realize you have the death sentence in every civilized system for the murder of the Supreme Leader?”

“I’m wanted for loads of things…in lots of systems,” she shrugged. Then her eyes grew wide. “But _you_ killed him. Fair and square! I was immobilized. I didn’t even help.”

“It wasn’t recorded.”

“You _framed_ me?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Rey thought for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t. As I said, I’m wanted for loads of things; what’s one more. But that puts your unwillingness to walk around with me, even in disguise, in a new light. I’ll admit it wouldn’t behoove me to traipse around the halls of First Order power if  _I’m_ meant to have taken out Snoke. I assumed that was how the whole picking-the-next-leader bit worked with you lot.”

“Now you see.”

“But when you say they don’t - what was it? They don’t ‘concede that succession of leadership,’ or whatever that was. Are we talking ‘they’ll make faces at you behind your back’? Or ‘they’ll clap you in irons and make you fight a monster in the arena’?”

“I’m not sure. It probably depends on who I run into. All I’m saying is, Supreme Leader _Snoke_ meant leadership over the full power of the First Order. Supreme Leader _Kylo_ _Ren_ doesn’t quite mean that.”

“And you aren’t sure what it does mean. And you’ve spent multiple years now trying to avoid finding out.”

He avoided eye contact.

“Is that accurate?” she pressed.

“Somewhat,” he muttered.

“Say, undertaking big architecture projects on seismically active planets, instead? Laying low and letting Hux manage the day-to-day operations of the armed forces? Going on little errands to take out ever smaller dissident factions on ever more obscure planets? Occasionally turning up to make an intimidating speech about the might of the First Order and - how did you put it - wave your lightsaber around? Just to give the old-school Vader fans a bit of a thrill on the HoloNet?” 

She could see the tips of his ears turning pink. “I  _do_ have approval power over First Order military operations, you know. They send me every major decision to ratify before they move forward.”

“Oh, of course,” she said solemnly. “That must keep you _very_ busy. So busy you had to think for more than fifteen seconds about haring off on this fool errand with me. Or are they sending you their plans, and you’ll just get up early every morning and go over them while I’m still in bed?”

“Shut up,” he hissed. 

“It’s okay,” she replied with venomous sweetness. “From what I understand, Darth Vader was basically an enforcer, a figure of intimidation with no real power base of his own in the Empire. He just did as the Emperor told him until the day he died. So in a way, you actually _did_ follow in his footsteps, just like you’ve always wanted.”

“Shut _up_,” he shouted, and a light went out.

“A slave,” she continued. “An attack dog on a leash. Only, Kylo, you _chose_ the leash.”

“Stop,” he screamed, the rest of the lights in the room popping and sparking, and she felt him grasp for her throat in the Force. Before he could take hold, she marveled momentarily at Anakin’s prescience, and aimed a swift kick at his still-broken rib. He went down like a sack of topatoes.

Rey stood panting for a minute. After she’d caught her breath, the first thing she said was, “Kriff. What now?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey learns a bit more about what Kylo Ren sees in his nightmares.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’d left an unconscious, injured Kylo Ren to wake up alone. But here on this unfamiliar, giant-worm-and-ghost-infested planet, where would she go? Should she take advantage of his incapacitated state to restrain him and get off Dagobah? Or should she make another attempt to locate the original Force focus they’d gone looking for, taking the risk of venturing outside on her own on this weird, steamy planet? Or…something else?

Rey felt silly meditating again after she’d just spent so much time sitting. But she really had no idea what the right course was, and had come to lean on communion with the Force to guide her. She tied Kylo’s wrists and ankles and locked him in a small cell she’d noticed at the back of the starship. Halfway down the length of the ship, she paused, turned around, returned to the cell. She stood outside a minute, looking at Kylo Ren. Then, guiltily, she unlocked the gate, used the Force to heal his rib, and locked it again.

“I’m sorry, Anakin. It just isn’t me,” she said to herself. 

She returned to her quarters and locked the door, settling back into her neutral stance and falling into the wildness of the Force presence on Dagobah.

At first, things felt even less orderly than before. Her own unsettled thoughts, her nervousness about what came next, created a clamor in her mind that she could not seem to clear. Just as she began to feel certain that even the Force wasn’t hearing her call, she heard a familiar voice.

“Still on Dagobah you are. Surprised I am. Seeking more advice you are,” it said. “Learn from your first experience with me, you did not?”

“I wasn’t seeking it from _you_,” she blurted out before it occurred to her that it was a rude thing to say.

“Ah, hot-tempered you are,” Yoda scolded lightly. “Too quick to speak. Much have you to learn, young Rey.”

“I know. I’m trying.” Rey winced as the words left her mouth, knowing already what he would reply.

“Mm, yes. Sure I am, that some words of wisdom on that topic you have heard before.”

“‘Do or do not,’ yes, I know.” 

“Hear the words you do, young Rey. Say them with your mouth, you do. But in your mind, your heart, know them you do not.” 

“I’ll do better.”

Yoda didn’t answer. Rey could not see him, only hear his voice in her head, so she wasn’t sure if he was still there. She cleared her throat.

“Impatient you are, impetuous you are,” he grumbled. “So young, can I ever have been? Yet all my padawans were knights, when your age they were. Shouldering command they were, shouldering burdens, taking padawans themselves. No such burdens have you. Yet so little time you have, so little patience.”

“I’m the last Jedi!” Rey burst out. “I’m supposed to figure out how to carry on this work to come to the aid of the Resistance, somehow, with no guidance, and as if that weren’t burden enough for anyone, every time I think I’m going to get started I find myself kriffing pregnant, again!”

The tone of Yoda’s voice indicated she’d managed to shock him. “Pregnant, say you? Explained the mechanisms of reproduction and contraception, has anyone? Taught that class to padawans I did for a century. Options you have, if celibacy you cannot maintain. Careless or wild have you been?”

“Careless! Wild!” she burst out, in part genuinely offended by the insinuation, in part hoping to head off the disturbing prospect of Yoda reprising his ‘class’ for her. “It’s the kriffing Force, Yoda, not me! Not that my - my private life is any of your business, but trust that this is not happening in the conventional way.”

Yoda was silent for a minute. “Ah. Understand now, I do. Your questions for the Force, to this matter they pertain.”

“Exactly.”

“A violation it must seem, a grave violation.” 

“Indeed.”

“And young Skywalker, violated he has been as well? Accompanies you he does for this reason?”

“I’m not sure how. But when I brought it up with him, he knew just what I was talking about. I’m sure he’s involved, somehow.”

“Mm,” Yoda grunted, then was silent for a spell. “Chosen have you been, but wish to be chosen you do not. Mm.”

Rey wasn’t sure how to reply, or whether she should. 

“The will of the Force it is,” he sighed. “Inscrutable it may be. Resist you may, but possible - mm. Possible it is that rest the Force will not until its child is born.”

Rey’s heart did its best to sink, but she refused to let it. “I can’t allow that to be my answer. I won’t.”

“Always in motion the future is,” Yoda admitted. “Clouded it is to me, even in this ethereal state. But, say it I will: consider accepting this fate you should.”

“No,” Rey said simply. “I’m not the Force’s vessel.”

“The Force’s vessels are we all, young Rey,” Yoda replied in a gently chiding tone. 

“No,” Rey repeated. “I’m a _person_, and I have the right to choose not to bear this child that’s being inflicted on me, and I am going to make that choice _stick_ or I am going to _die trying_,” she said, and in that moment she knew it was true.

“Perish you might,” Yoda agreed.

“Better that,” Rey averred.

“Your priorities I cannot understand,” Yoda sighed. “But then, my priorities, incorrect they turned out to be. Clouded my judgment was. Fallible I was. Perhaps the promptings of my body, I should have heeded.”

“But what do I _do_ now,” Rey asked through gritted teeth. “Where do I _go_. Is there more to learn here? Should I stay on Dagobah?” 

“Mm, eat fresh vegetables you should,” he replied with an infuriating chuckle. “More sleep you should enjoy.” 

A sudden thought occurred to Rey. “Which vegetables do you recommend?”

“Ah,” Yoda said, a smile in his voice. “A question many never think to ask! Yarum and galla seeds, nutritious they are, and toothsome too. Sohli bark, too, fine properties it has. Gather them on Dagobah you may wish to do, while you remain here.”

“Worth sticking around here a bit longer?” Rey grinned, feeling she’d cracked a code.

“Say that did I?” Yoda asked, all innocence. “Merely culinary tips, I thought to offer. On other worlds you visit, fewer flora may you encounter. Dead planets, desert planets, city planets, very dry they can be, very inhospitable. The riches of Dagobah, not every planet offers. Not so very far from here, no more than a klick in the direction of the setting sun, a grove you may find, with yarum plants in abundance, and other things as well.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“Yoda’s advice, _frustrating_ it is, yes? _Irritated_ you are?”

“Very,” she laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell all my friends how useless and annoying it was to talk to you.”

“Glad I am to hear it,” he sniffed. “A reputation to maintain I have.”

#

Rey decided to go off in search of Yoda’s grove on her own. She cut Kylo’s bindings but left him locked in, with a few ration bars and some water. She figured if anything happened to her, he’d eventually manage to free himself. She grabbed a few more ration bars, more water, and a medkit for herself, dropped them into a rucksack with a glow rod, and put on her boots. Wanting to honor Yoda, she looked up the plants he had mentioned so she’d be able to recognize them if she saw them on her way. She heard Kylo stir as she packed, but he didn’t wake.

It was early afternoon, and the sun was high overhead, shining thinly through a misty haze. Luckily, Rey remembered the direction in which the sun had set the previous night, and set off in that direction. Her way was fairly clear, and the planet seemed less hostile somehow than it had the previous day. Before she knew it, she found herself in a grove ringed with sohli trees. She foraged some bark, and some yarum seeds, and breathed deeply. 

As she’d expected, she did feel a pull in the Force after a minute or two. It led her out of the grove, through a tangle of vines and branches, into deep forest, where she discovered a cave that beckoned her in. It wasn’t a friendly beckoning, not at all - she felt like a small animal being lured into something’s jaws. But she knew for a fact this was where Yoda had instructed her to go.

Rey walked into the cave through a swarm of glowing flies. “Very nice,” she said approvingly, never having seen such a thing before. And suddenly a cold wind blew out of the cave, and she was in a vision.

Before her was her own self, hugely pregnant, smudged with sweaty dirt, alone. Rey locked eyes with her pregnant double. “You!” the double screamed, and ignited a red lightsaber Rey had never seen before. 

“Me?” Rey replied, scrambling for her own saber. “I’m you!” She managed to get her own weapon turned on just as the other Rey took her first swing, and only barely blocked it. The fight that followed was short but intense. Obviously, the Reys knew all of each other’s tricks, and at first it seemed evenly matched. Stroke for stroke, one hit, the other blocked or parried. Pregnant Rey was a little stronger, non-pregnant Rey was a little quicker. But Rey realized that her pregnant counterpart was thrown off balance by her belly, and given the lack of other advantages, she felt she had to use the most obvious one. She told herself it was a vision, only a vision, not a real pregnant woman, despite how totally corporeal it all felt, and sucked in a breath.

She used the wall to launch herself into a flip and gave the pregnant belly a swift kick on the way down. The pregnant woman hissed in pain, and stumbled. In the moment of imbalance Rey struck again with her lightsaber and the other Rey fell hard against a boulder, unable to block while remaining upright. In an instant Rey’s saber was at her neck.

“Please,” the pregnant woman said. Rey couldn’t tell whether it was a “let me live” please, or a “put me out of my misery” please.

“The baby?”

“See for yourself,” she replied, and disappeared. In her place was a swaddled bundle, positioned to face the boulder. Rey didn’t want to know what the baby looked like. She really, really didn’t. She nudged at it with a booted toe to turn it, and gasped in horror. It was asleep, but it had the face of an old man, disfigured by scarring, white as ash, and hideously wrinkled around its red-rimmed eyes. 

At her gasp, its eyes snapped open. The baby’s irises were an unnatural gold she’d never seen on a human before. Rey began to hyperventilate, stepping backward in fear, and the baby made intelligent, malicious eye contact before it grinned slowly, revealing a mouth full of blackened, decaying teeth.

It opened its mouth as if to speak. 

Rey turned, and ran. 

#

Rey didn’t stop running until she was back at the _Needle_, and she didn’t relax until she was inside, with the ramp closed and secured. She stood in the entryway, too winded to take off her boots, doubled over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. 

“Hey!” she heard Kylo Ren shout from the end of the hall. “Is that you?” He sounded a lot calmer than she would have expected.

Rey caught her breath for another minute before answering. “Yeah,” she called. “Let’s get the kriff off this planet. What time is it?” 

“Local? I’d say 1600 or so. Not that I’m in a position to look it up,” he said pointedly. “I woke up about an hour ago.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Really, I am.” She removed her boots and threw them into the cleaner, which whirred into action. “I just wanted to figure out what was going on with this stupid planet.”

“Did you fix my rib?”

“Yeah.”

“You said you couldn’t.”

It hadn’t even occurred to Rey that this might be what he wanted to talk about when she got back. She padded down the hall and turned to face him, and did a double take.

The cell she’d locked him in was an utter wreck. He’d pried a chunk of metal off the bench and had clearly just swung it indiscriminately in every direction, denting and battering the walls, floor, and bars. He’d somehow managed to cut up his own hands and face pretty badly in the process, and was still bleeding freely from a cut on his left arm.

“You need to get that temper of yours _under control_,” she said. 

“So they tell me.”

“I mean, really, Kylo. You hurt yourself worse than I hurt you.”

“Can you blame me?”

“For being angry? Of course not. For taking it out on, apparently, your ship and your own body? Absolutely! Why not save your energy to confront _me_? That would’ve been the strategic thing! Not that I’m complaining.”

“I didn’t think you were going to come back.”

“Ah.” Rey paused for a beat. “Where, may I ask, did you think I was going to go?”

He reddened. “Do I look like  someone who thought that through?”

Rey sighed. “Well, at least it seems like you got the rage out of your system before I got back. I just had an  _extremely_ disturbing experience and I might very well have injured you further if you’d still been…rampaging…when I walked in.” 

“Where were you?”

“I ventured back out to see if I couldn’t find the actual Force nexus thing we were looking for when we came here.” 

“I take it you did.”

“I did.” She grimaced. “I wish I hadn’t.”

“You saw the baby.” It wasn’t a question. 

Rey’s eyes snapped to Kylo’s. “I did. And I wish I hadn’t. Is that what you’ve been dreaming?”

“Sometimes.” He shuddered, and Rey’s heart swelled with sympathy. “I have many dreams. None of them pleasant. But - you saw its eyes?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“That golden iris - I think it’s a Sith thing.”

“Sith? You mean, like Darth Vader, ‘lord of the Sith’? What does that even mean?”

“It’s an ancient sect of Dark side Force users. Well, not so ancient. It was thought to be extinct, but as I understand it, Darth Vader was one.”

“Interesting.”

“They’re supposed to be extinct _now_, though,” Kylo clarified. “Darth Vader was supposed to be the last one. But of course you can’t really set your chrono by their ‘extinction’ if one just popped up a few years back.”

“Right. So, not every Dark side force user is a Sith?”

He rolled his eyes. “Are my eyes yellow? Were Snoke’s?”

“Right, of course, silly of me. So, what distinguishes the Sith from other Dark side Force sensitives?”

“I think they’re like the Jedi, it’s a somewhat religious thing, or an ideology. Though, honestly, I never was able to learn much about the Sith,” he added bitterly. “Nobody trusted me with that knowledge.”

“What does it _mean_, though?” she pressed. “And why did it look so _old_? And so…_creepy_?”

“I don’t know, Rey,” he said wearily. “I’ve been trying to figure it all out myself for the better part of a year.”

“I know,” she said miserably. “I hate this.”

“Me too.” 

They were both quiet for a minute. “But about my rib,” he began.

“Right, right. I just - figured it out.”

“What, _today_?”

She knew it wasn’t plausible. But she didn’t have a better story. So she shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “You aren’t telling me something.”

“Are we back to this? We’re both holding things back. That’s not the point. I don’t require you to confide every one of your secrets in order for me to trust you, and I’d ask you for the same respect for my privacy. No offense, but we aren’t _friends_. We’re people with a problem in common. Once we’ve solved it, we’ll go our separate ways.”

“Okay, okay.” He stood down. “So are we ready to leave Dagobah? Do you think there’s anything more to learn here?”

“If you want to take your chances with the Cave of Horrible Infants down there, you can probably get out and back before dark. Take a glow rod just in case, but it’s not far.”

He grimaced. “Do I have to?”

“We’re right here, may as well. But of course you don’t have to. Let’s get some bacta on that arm before you head out, though.” 

In the end they agreed they’d stay the night, spend the evening deciding on their itinerary and cooking some real food, and he’d go first thing in the morning when the bugs were less oppressive while she prepared the  _Needle_ for launch. 

Rey remembered her rucksack bounty when she saw Kylo surveying the vegetables in the galley. “Say, I gathered these seeds and bark, if you want to try and use them.” 

“What sort of seeds and bark? Are they edible?”

“I have it on good authority,” she said. “Look.” She pulled up the HoloNet resource on edible plants of Dagobah.

“Huh!” Kylo sounded genuinely impressed. “Well thought of, scavenger. It’s always nice to work with fresh, local ingredients when you can.” 

“So I hear.”

“Do you want me to teach you to cook a few things? It really is a useful skill.”

Rey considered. “Sure.”

“All right. Wash your hands. This here is a chef’s knife. It’s the only knife you really need in your kitchen. Hone it before you use it - keeps it sharp. No, like this.”

And with that, they went to work. 

#

The next morning, Kylo set off in the direction opposite the sunrise. He was quiet and pale, too pale. Rey was all too aware he hadn’t slept, had barely meditated, all night long; his unsettled emotions stained the atmosphere in the whole ship, and kept her from sleeping too. She wished she hadn’t mentioned the scary baby. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “You really don’t have to. We could just leave.”

“We’re here, I should,” he said, the muscles in his jaw visibly tensing. 

“You don’t have to tell me what you see.”

“Of course I don’t,” he said, but Rey thought she heard a hint of relief. He pulled on his boots and set off.

Rey kicked off the preflight diagnostics and set about tidying up the ship. Even though they’d taken off their shoes, it felt grimy in the main cabin; Dagobah was just such a muddy, slimy planet that they’d managed to track things in. Rey wasn’t usually someone to worry about neatness, but the ship had been almost antiseptically clean when they’d set off; she felt bad it had gotten into such a state so quickly. 

She cleaned up her own sleeping quarters, but hesitated when she reached the door of Kylo’s. Should she? Her gut feeling was that she should probably leave him a private space on the ship. But a split second later, she was sure that was folly. What if he had some sort of weapons or artifacts in there that he might be planning to use against her? It was silly not to take the opportunity. As she’d just said, they weren’t friends. 

The door slid open at a touch. It was monastically neat inside, Kylo somehow having avoided tracking in the mud better than she had, and she breathed a sigh of relief; clearly nothing too conspicuously nefarious was underway, no sinister chemistry lab or electronics projects to investigate. Really, there was nothing to clean.

On his desk was a book bound in brown leather. At first she thought it was one of the Jedi texts, but she remembered she’d left them on Mustafar. Her fingers itched to open it and read, and she reached for it, but the Force warned her not to.

“No. He’ll know,” she said to herself. “Best not.” She backed out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given the content of this chapter it feels almost subversive to mention that I'm supposed to give birth to a baby sometime this week, so if I miss posting Thursday or next Monday, that's why.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo gets unexpected news from an unexpected source.

With one eye on the diagnostic readouts, all of which appeared to be within parameters, Rey did some reading while she waited for Kylo to return. News on the HoloNet was nothing special; sporting events dominated, as coverage of the First Order government was such blatant propaganda that most news outlets barely bothered to edit the press releases they were handed, let alone attempt investigative journalism that was likely to be rewarded with prison time or execution. There was no local news on Dagobah that she could find, and of course no word of dissident activity. She didn’t dare try to contact local Resistance agents; how could she explain that she was traveling with Kylo Ren? Rey was so thankful that her status as Last Jedi meant her associates mostly just assumed she was doing inscrutable “Jedi stuff” and left her to her own devices. It was lonely, sometimes, but so much better than being accountable to explain her every move. 

She decided to do a little reading on Castell, the Colonies world they’d decided to use as a refuel and resupply stop rather than taking the risk of landing on Coruscant or another planet closer to the Core. They’d considered Brentaal IV, but it sounded like the main attraction on-planet was a First Order officer training school, which didn’t seem like a particularly promising tourist stop for them. Castell sounded less perilous altogether; a politically engaged world, as most were so near the Core, but not the site of any particular patronage or infrastructure project. Unfortunately, this meant there was much less to read about Castell. Rey found vague references to a shipyard that had once orbited the planet, but little concrete information. She wondered if there was good salvage on the planet, or whether most of the shipyard had burned up in the atmosphere when whatever had destroyed it had happened. 

So many planets had these incomplete, patchy histories; the repeated regime changes over the past decades meant that official histories were scrubbed of pivotal events overnight, while other events were restored or sometimes fabricated to fit the newly “correct” narrative. Nothing ever really left local memory, though, even if sometimes past occurrences grew distorted or confused over time. Events survived as legend, myth, or rumor, in the absence of a consistent and coherent official record. Rey hoped they’d get to see enough of Castell to figure out what had happened to the shipyard.

“50 credits says it was Clone Wars sabotage,” she said to herself, sipping cold water from a tall, slim glass with her feet up on the control board, admiring the green jungle view, the red-and-gold butterflies that only came out in the morning before it got warm. Dagobah wasn’t so bad as long as you stayed indoors, she thought.

Suddenly, utter devastation hit her in the Force, so strongly she almost threw up from the impact. Without even thinking, she put her drink down, ran to the ramp and pulled on her boots and rucksack, and started off for the grove.

“What was I thinking letting that wastoid go off on his own,” she muttered to herself. “He was barely _walking_, he was so tired. What an idiot!” She wasn’t sure if she meant him or her. It was dangerous to run on Dagobah, due to the vine-rich, boggy terrain, but she was walking fast, probably foolishly fast.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw him trudge out of the forest. At least he was standing. “What happened?” she called. “Are you all right?”

“My mother is dead,” he called back, his voice breaking on the last word. “My mother is dead.”

Rey’s face fell. She walked with the biggest strides she could muster, closing the distance between them as quickly as she could, and wrapped him in a hug worthy of Chewbacca, letting her tears fall, letting him feel them on his skin. 

He allowed it for a minute, then pushed her away, gently. “It means nothing,” he said. “It changes nothing.”

“It means something, Ben,” she said, remembering the wash of emotion she had just felt in the Force. “She was still your mother. She loved you to the last.”

“Don’t call me that,” he replied reflexively, but there was no fire in it. “Please, not now.”

“Sorry.” She sniffled. “Come on back to the ship, let’s get out of here. Do you know what happened?”

“She died in her sleep, just now. That was what the cave had to show me.”

“Are you sure it was true? Not just a vision?”

“Yes,” he said shortly. “I’m certain.”

#

Kylo sat down hard once they were back in the ship. Rey didn’t make him talk. “I’m going to set a course for Castell.” She looked at him and he nodded confirmation. Luckily the still somewhat unfamiliar starship was dead easy to pilot; it did most of the heavy lifting, suggesting trajectories, calculating hyperspace vectors, avoiding tolls and closures. Those Nubian shipbuilders knew their trade. The ship lifted off and began to head out of the atmosphere.

Out of nowhere, “I killed her,” said Kylo Ren. His face was all but covered by one of his huge hands. He sat at the table in a posture of total defeat.

Rey wrinkled her eyebrows. “I doubt that,” she said slowly.

“I think I did,” he said. “I think the Force connected us, and when she felt my presence, she let go.”

“She’s been ill for quite a long time, though,” Rey said. “That doesn’t mean you killed her. It means you helped her close her journey. That’s an _honor_, Kylo,” she said solemnly. “It’s a rite on Jakku, one of the mysteries of service, to have been present for a leave-taking. And it’s an expression of her trust and love, that she held on for you to watch her go her last way.” Frankly, it surprised Rey, though she didn’t think it would be prudent ever to tell him so. If it were her she didn’t think she’d have waited to take leave of a son who’d killed his father and disavowed his mother. But then, the General had lost so many people. Her only child may have been the only person she had left worth waiting for.

“She’s been ill?”

“She never really recovered from her few seconds in space,” she clarified, delicately not mentioning why Leia had spent time in vacuum in the first place. “You remember.”

“I do.”

“She had a hard time regaining her strength. Her lungs were damaged, and in the time it took them to regain enough function for her to breathe comfortably without help, she lost a lot of muscle and bone mass. Once you’re systemically compromised that way, especially at her age, you really do need some time to focus on recovery and some medical help, and she never let herself take that time or get that help. Not that she really had the opportunity, given she was on the run. She had a hard life, your mother.”

“I had no idea she wasn’t well,” he said quietly. “Hells, I’ve just…” his voice trailed off. “I should’ve…” he started again, then stopped.

“She seemed immortal,” Rey said with a nod, trying hard to sound impartial and sympathetic. “I…I’ve observed that most people with parents believe in some part of their hearts that their particular parents might live forever, and your mother especially was someone who was always overcoming the odds. But it’s amazing she lived as long as she did, when you think about what she did with the time she had.”

Kylo sat at the table, not agreeing, not disagreeing. There was slight turbulence as the ship emerged from the atmosphere into open space and the secondary nav system kicked in to take the ship to the nearest hyperspace lane.

“You _didn’t_ kill her,” Rey felt she should repeat, standing and putting a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t react.

It was going to be a long, quiet flight to Castell. Rey gave his shoulder a squeeze, suppressing a mad urge to kiss his head, and retired to her quarters, but left her door open. She intended to nap, but once she heard him begin to cry,  his sobs ragged and uninhibited, like a child’s, she couldn’t get to sleep. 

#

Rey spent a few hours in her quarters, thinking hard about whether she felt sorry for Kylo Ren for having lost his parents in traumatic ways and having to live with those memories, or whether she resented him for wasting the opportunity to have a relationship with a pair of reasonably good parents, and whether it was possible to feel both ways at once about it. She eventually emerged, unable to meditate and unable to sleep, because her stomach was growling. Kylo had fallen asleep at the table with his head pillowed on his arms. She could see his eyes moving and his jaw working as he dreamed, and wondered whether to wake him. 

It felt embarrassing to eat a ration bar when she’d just gotten a surprisingly competent cooking lesson from her traveling companion. On the other hand, she still didn’t feel she could operate independently in this galley. She opted for a compromise of cutting up some fruit and dipping it in nut paste. As she sat down at the table, Kylo began to whimper. She reached across and gently shook him. 

“Wha - where - oh,” he said. “Rey.”

“You were dreaming,” she explained. “Ghibli fruit?”

“Thanks,” he said, taking a slice, not specifying if the gratitude was for the snack or the interruption.

“Any time.”

They chewed quietly. 

“And thanks for handling the prep and takeoff.” 

“Honestly, it was no trouble, the ship did everything once I set the course. You were in no shape, anyway.”

“I know.” 

“I really am sorry about your mother.”

He heaved a big sigh. “It was complicated, as you know.” 

“Yes. But clearly, some part of you is hurting that she’s gone.”

“Apparently.”

“So, I’m sorry.” Rey felt the need to keep talking to fill the space between them, afraid to make eye contact. “I’m glad you were there for her. It was clearly something she needed, even if it didn’t hold the same meaning for you. I hope in time you’ll come to see it as I do, even though right now the pain is so fresh that isn’t possible. I mean it that where I’m from it’s an honor to be present.”

“I believe you. It just wasn’t - ”

“You weren’t expecting that. You prepared yourself for a vision, not real life. You expected to learn something, but not something real in the universe. Something about your mind, or your heart.”

“Exactly.”

“But the line between Force visions and real life can be, well.”

“Foggy,” he finished, in the tone of one who knew he would be completely understood.

“Yes.” She looked up at him and found him gazing back. The eye contact was as uncomfortable as she’d expected, but she didn’t want to be the one to break it. 

He blinked and looked away after a moment. “So. A few days to Castell, right? What do you want to do on the way?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “What do you usually do on long space flights?”

“Meditate. Combat drills. Cook elaborate meals for one. Spar, if I have a partner. Read, if I brought anything with me. Write, if I didn’t. What about you?”

Sing loudly and tunelessly, masturbate, talk to myself in funny voices, watch pirated holodramas, she thought. Aloud, she responded, “Same, pretty much. Well, no cooking. Does this ship have a room big enough to get some sparring in? Maybe we could tire ourselves both out enough to get some dreamless sleep.”

“There’s a whole finished cargo hold below that I added some nice sparring features to so I could dual-use it when I wasn’t carrying cargo, which we aren’t,” he replied with a predatory grin, his mood suddenly seeming much improved with the prospect of some distraction from his woes. “Best two of three?”

“What does the winner get?”

“Bragging rights?” 

She raised an eyebrow. “Loser cleans up after dinner.” 

“You’re on,” he agreed. 

“Lead the way, then.” She stood, glad to have some physical activity to take their minds off their loss.

#

“Did you always fight so _dirty_,” he asked, laughter in his voice as they headed back up the stairs. It made Rey’s heart swell to hear him sound so happy when he’d been so desolate not too long before. “I can’t believe you call yourself a Jedi.”

“I learned to fight in a very rough environment, I’ll have you know,” she said sanctimoniously. “I wasn’t exchanging gentlemanly blows in those rich-boy dojos on Chandrila or wherever the kriff it was you learned to throw a punch. Or _pull_ one, as the case may be. It was kill or be killed in Niima outpost, and I mean that literally.”

“So, yes, is what you’re trying to say? You’ve never been an honorable fighter?”

“What does that even mean? Honorable.”

“Hopeless,” he said with an eye roll.

“Says the man who has to clean up after dinner.” 

He shook his head bemusedly. “I just don’t understand how  _I’m_ supposed to be the one using the Dark side. You put your thumb in my _ear_. _Well_ in.”

“I learned that one from a five-year-old Rodian. Trust that no Force alignment is necessarily involved in that particular maneuver. Highly _effective_ maneuver, may I add.” She stuck her tongue out as if to cement the association between her fighting style and that of a small child. 

“You must be so proud. When you found your own Jedi academy I expect you’ll erect a statue of your Rodian sparring master.”

“Perhaps I should. Lend the proper gravitas to the place,” she grinned, stroking her chin contemplatively across the galley. “Another ghibli fruit?”

“Why not,” he replied as she got it out and began to wash it.

They were both still sweaty and flushed from fighting. Rey wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever actually just gotten to spar for fun before. That was great!”

“It was,” he said warmly. “We’re well matched.”

“We are,” she said, and met his eyes over the plate of chopped fruit as she nudged it in his direction. She’d never seen him smile so sincerely. It lit up the room. She faltered and looked away, suddenly too aware of how small the space was, and how big he was in it. “What were you thinking of having for dinner?”

“We could use up the rest of the ingredients you foraged on Dagobah,” he suggested, his voice less boisterous. “Maybe use them in a sauce over dough dumplings?”

“That sounds good, assuming you can take the lead on the dumplings.”

“Easiest thing in the world. Your five-year-old Rodian friend could do it.”

“His name was Nordo, if we’re going to keep referencing him in conversation,” she replied with a laugh.

“Nordo could make dough dumplings blindfolded,” he stated confidently. “And so will you, by the time we’re done cooking.”

He put her to work chopping and mincing while he measured spices, and they got a sauce on the hot plate to simmer. Then he started getting out various cheeses and flours and eggs and mixed them all, narrating as he went. 

“So you just drop the full package of this soft cheese right on the board like so, then break two eggs into it, then sprinkle, oh, one of your fists full of this hard cheese grated in, then you can use the empty package to measure your flour if you rinse it out and dry it,” he showed her. “Get it about half full of flour. Then you can just mash it all up together with your hands for a few minutes. Do you want to try?”

“Um, sure,” she ventured. It looked squishy.

“Wash your hands first, you’ve still got some acid on there from the sohli bark.”

After she washed up, she dove into kneading the dough. “Did you get to cook at all when you were at Luke’s school? Or did you just remember all this from your childhood with your parents?”

“Students did everything at the school. Cooking, cleaning, maintenance, even growing most of our own food. I set the menus for the school most of the time, and cooked for dozens of kids a few times a week.”

“How interesting! There were no staff? Is that usual for a school?”

“It’s not usual, but it’s how ours operated. He said it was because he didn’t want the next generation of Jedi to think of people with less Force sensitivity as servants, which has a certain ring of truth to it, but tell me…did Luke Skywalker strike you as the sort of man who’d really be able to hire and manage employees?” He pinched the dough, frowned, and dripped in just a few drops of water from his fingertips. 

Rey caught herself focusing for too long on his long, nimble fingers and shook her head. “Imagine if he had to fire one.”

“I don’t think he could’ve.” Kylo shook his head, and his tone grew bitter. “He was prepared to cut me down in my sleep, but the basic sorts of human interactions that anyone else could manage were just too…”

“Well, in any case, no wonder you’re such a dab hand at this galley stuff,” she interrupted hastily, sensing his anger rising. “It’s great to have those sorts of skills, speaking as someone who never got a chance to learn. Watching you just know how much cheese to how much flour is like sorcery to me.” 

“Yes,” he admitted. “I’m glad I know how to cook. Nobody ever expects me to.”

“How often do situations arise in which your cooking expertise comes in handy?”

“You might be surprised.” He didn’t elaborate. “Okay, I think your dough is all set. Now shape it into an oval, about this thick,” he indicated with his thumb and forefinger, “and cut it into cubes. I’ll check on the sauce.”

The sauce appeared to be done, so he removed it from the heat and put water on. “Once this boils, all we need to do is dump those little pieces in the water a few at a time for a couple minutes, then fish them out and serve them in sauce. Simple. Ten minutes and we’ll be eating.”

“It _was_ simple,” Rey smiled. The sauce smelled delicious. The galley was warm. For the first time, Kylo felt like a friend. She knew it couldn’t possibly last, that one of them would say or do something to mess up the dynamic. They didn’t know how to stop stepping on one another’s toes. But she was determined to enjoy the moment, and relish the cosy feeling of traveling with someone she liked, who liked her back, for however long it lasted.

“Would you like an ale?” he asked, rooting around in the refrigeration unit.

“_Absolutely_,” she grinned. He opened up two bottles and handed her one, holding his out to clink. “To your mother,” she ventured, taking the risk of possibly disturbing their fragile detente because it was something she absolutely needed to say.

“To Leia Organa,” he said solemnly. “I’m sure somewhere, your friends are toasting her memory tonight.”

“They are, I know they are,” she said, suddenly lonely for them, looking up at the ceiling to keep tears from springing into her eyes. “And so are we.”

Dinner was a companionable affair. They joked gently with one another about their sparring session, five-year-old Rodians, Rey’s lack of formal schooling and what she’d done to make up for it, Kylo’s belief that he’d had an excess of same and what he’d done to make up for _that_. Rey suggested another round of ales, and Kylo happily obliged. For a big guy, he seemed to be quite a lightweight, maybe due to chronic sleep deprivation; Rey was surprised by how silly he’d become after a single ale, and after two he was pink-cheeked and clumsily flirtatious, and kept challenging her to sing patriotic songs she’d never heard of. 

“You’re drunk, Kylo Ren,” she said with a laugh.

“You’re lying, everyone knows ‘All Glory to the Emperor’,” he slurred.

“Why would _either_ of us know a song about the Emperor? We grew up in the New Republic!”

“So? It’s still a very well known song,” he said, pointing hazily at her.

“Did your father, perhaps, sing it to your mother to nettle her?” she asked, pointing back.

“Perhaps,” he admitted. He started humming a bombastic-sounding tune, occasionally murmuring half-lyrics about power and supremacy. 

“Charming song. Doesn’t ring a bell, though,” she said. “And _you_ need to go to bed.”

“Spoilsport. The night is young!”

“You’ve had a long day,” she said, walking around the table to try to pull him to his feet. “Up.”

“I have,” he marveled, as if it wouldn’t have occurred to him without her help. “A _strange_ day.”

“Aren’t they all,” she agreed, hooking her hands under his armpits and tugging. “And now it’s time to call it a night.”

He allowed himself to maneuvered away from the table and into his room. “I should bathe,” he said weakly. 

“When you wake up,” she countered.

“Fine, _mother_,” he yawned as he sat down on the bed.

“I’ll take that as the compliment I’m sure it was intended to be,” she replied, tapping the door control to shut it behind her.

She leaned her back against his door and knocked her head against it, gently enough that she didn’t think he’d hear. “What the kriff,” she whispered to herself. “What the  _kriff_ was that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still pregnant!


	7. Chapter 7

They both lay in bed late the following day. Well, Rey woke up at a normal hour but stayed in her room late, mostly because she wasn’t sure how to talk about last night’s strange dinner and wanted to put it off as long as possible. When she finally did get too hungry to remain in her quarters, she poked her nose out and discovered Kylo Ren had not yet emerged. She mixed an instant cold porridge up in a mug and added some nut paste and dried hwotha berries. She’d never tried this nut paste stuff before this trip but she was really beginning to develop a taste for it. She brewed a pot of caf and had a huge cup.

Just as she was beginning to wonder if she should check on her traveling companion, she heard his door activate. “Ugh,” he grunted. “Is that you?”

“Not sure who else you think it might be,” she said. “Come have some caf.”

“I apologize for anything weird I said or did last night,” he said preemptively. 

“No need,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Beyond your challenging me to sing songs I’ve never heard of and maybe being a bit savage about the many, many indispensably classic works of literature I’ve never read, it was a perfectly pleasant evening.” 

He retrieved a mug and filled it to the brim with caf, and grabbed a sweet bun from the refrigeration unit which he ate right out of the package. “Well, it sounds like it could have been worse,” he admitted. “I wasn’t sure I was remembering all of it.”

“You’d had a very difficult day. I’m glad you got a chance to cut loose, at least a little bit.”

“I can usually hold my liquor better.”

“I’d hope so. You’ve got to weigh half again what I do, at least.” 

“It’s the sleep,” he sighed. “I know I’ve got to try to get more, before we get to these Force focus places. But hells if I want to.”

“Did you dream last night?”

“Yes,” he grimaced. “Always.”

“Would it help to talk about it?”

“No.”

She put a hand on his arm. “You know I would never judge you, or be upset, about these dreams, right? I know the Force is giving them to you. They aren’t your fault, any more than falling pregnant has been my fault, and I don’t think for a second that you or anything lurking in your mind is to blame. I see how hard they are on you.”

“I believe you, I do,” he said, removing her hand, “it’s more that I just can’t make myself say a lot of it out loud.”

“All right. But if you change your mind, sometimes it really does just help to have someone to listen while you talk.”

He shrugged.

“And it doesn’t have to be me,” she continued. “You could talk to a droid, or even your own pillow. When I had nightmares when I was small, I told a doll if I was having a hard time going back to sleep. I know you say you don’t want to say it out loud, but I do think just getting it out of your head might be cathartic. It really might be the best use of our time in hyperspace.” 

“I’ll consider it,” he said, in a tone that indicated he wouldn’t.

“You know,” she said, an idea coming to her, “do you remember Yoda implied you might ask Anakin about the dreams? Have you tried meditating and focusing on him? I bet he’d be happy to listen.”

“Since when are you on a first-name basis with Anakin Skywalker?” he asked suspiciously.

Rey felt herself blush, and blushed harder because of it. “He’s nice.”

“I didn’t even know you’d communicated with him.”

“I thought I’d mentioned it,” she said lightly, a lie.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t know how you think I’d get his attention. He doesn’t know me, or even what I look like.”

“If I were able to direct him your way, would you be willing to talk to him? No promises, mind.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do, then.” She sipped her caf. “What else do you want to do today?”

“Another spar would be great,” he said. “I hate to admit it, but I’m learning a lot.”

“Why do you hate to admit it? I survived from a young age as a girl, all alone, on a very resource-scarce planet. Of course there’s a lot almost anyone can learn from me about combat. I’ve picked up a lot of good tricks over the years, tricks I’m sure you could put to good use. And I’m learning a lot from you, too.”

“I suppose,” he said. 

She drained her caf and scraped the last porridge out of her mug with a spoon. “Well, if I’m going to try to raise Anakin Skywalker I guess there’s no time like the present.”

“You did the dishes last night,” he said in a tone of sudden realization. “That was my job.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “You were in no state.”

“You won, though,” he said simply. “At least let me do your mugs.”

“Sure,” she said, handing them off. “Thanks. I’ll be in my quarters if you need me.” The ship beeped alarmingly. “What’s that?”

He glanced at the display. “Oh, we’re coming up on Malastare. We’ll drop out of hyperspace for a minute; it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll keep an eye on it, but the ship can navigate back in unless there’s something unusual happening at the platform.”

“Okay. Well, if you need me, I’m not far.” 

He saluted ironically and got started with the breakfast dishes, humming “All Glory to the Emperor.”

#

Rey shut the door of her quarters and sat cross-legged on her bed, hoping it would not be hard to get Anakin’s attention in the Force, and hoping he’d be willing to engage with Kylo Ren. She wished she hadn’t mentioned that he was terrible, but maybe that would help her case.

Many minutes went by and Rey didn’t feel even a hint of Anakin’s unusual presence in the Force. Just as she was about to give up, though, he swept into her thoughts.

“You know, I do have other things to do sometimes,” he said casually, folding his arms in front of his chest.

“Oh? Such as?”

He waved a hand. “Force stuff. Not worth explaining. How’s your healing? You fixed that rib, didn’t you. Don’t deny it, it’s written all over your face.”

“I did kick it and knock him out once before I fixed it, though!”

He sighed and shook his head. “Better than nothing, I guess. But the rib is fine now?”

“He noticed it was better, yeah.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got the healing down, even if you’re being…annoyingly ethical about it.”

“Thanks again for teaching me,” she smiled, happy to be forgiven.

“So what was so urgent that you sat there for ages begging me to show up?”

“I wasn’t begging,” she clarified in annoyance. “But Kylo Ren, your terrible grandson, has been having these horrible dreams every night that we’re pretty sure are caused by the Force. Yoda mentioned you might be a person to ask about that?”

“Oof,” he huffed, growing solemn. “Yes. I _would_ be a person to ask about that, though I don’t know that I’d have any answers. Do you know anything about the dreams? Has he told you what’s in them?”

“He says there are many, but he won’t tell me anything about them. I only know anything about one of them, and it’s only because I saw the same thing, in a vision on Dagobah the day before yesterday.”

She described her vision and Kylo’s reaction to it, and Anakin grew graver and graver. She had thought of him as someone who was rather shockingly carefree for someone she knew to have been a Jedi knight and eventually Darth Vader, but this Anakin was more like the Anakin she’d expected to meet - a serious, intelligent problem solver with the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. At the end he shook his head. 

“Well, I don’t want to tell you what I think this all sounds like because I don’t want to alarm you unduly if it turns out I’m incorrect. But I can tell you it sounds very disturbing, and I’m _very_ glad you sought me out and trusted me with this information. Do you think my terrible grandson would be willing to talk to me about this?”

“When I proposed it to him he said ‘maybe’. I’d perhaps not mention anyone called him terrible, if you manage to contact him.”

Anakin laughed. “He knows he’s terrible, I’m sure. Is he near you right now?”

“Yes, but don’t bug him just this minute, he’s about to navigate the Malastare hyperlane platform swap. Why does it matter if he’s near me?”

“I don’t know, but it helps, physical proximity. So, let me understand - he’s had nightmares. How are you involved here?”

Rey felt embarrassed saying something so personal to Anakin, somehow, but at least she was reasonably confident he wouldn’t offer to teach her about how sex worked. “I’ve gotten pregnant several times this year - and I haven’t been doing any of the, er, prerequisites for such a condition to, um, arise, and I just had a feeling…”

“_Ugh_,” Anakin snarled. “Well. That - you know the same sort of thing happened to my mother, right?”

“So I gather.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry this is happening to you. Ugh, this might be the key to something else I’ve been trying to pin down…hmm. I need to talk to Darth Terrible in the cockpit, once you’re safely in hyperspace - I’m sure I’ll be able to convince him to tell me more about his dreams than you’ve been able to wring out of him.” 

“I hope so.” For some reason Rey felt her eyes fill with tears, and tried to blink them away, powerfully embarrassed to show so much emotion in front of Anakin Skywalker.

“Rey, we are going to figure this out and put an end to it, all right? You don’t know me very well, but know that I am _tenacious_, and I am _resourceful_, and I am _on the case_, as of now. This is personal to me. I wish you’d been clearer with me before. I know you made some implications, but I didn’t manage to put two and two together.”

“Thanks,” she said, sniffling. “You should not call him Darth Terrible, by the way.”

“I’ll call him as I see him, kiddo,” Anakin smiled. 

Suddenly, on the ship, loud klaxons began to sound. “Proximity alert,” said a calm, feminine voice. 

“Rey!” Kylo could be heard to shout from the other side of the door. “Use someone on guns out here!”

“Sounds like you’re wanted,” Anakin said, and the vision faded out as Rey ran for the door, still wiping her eyes.

#

“Platform swap go bad?” Rey shouted back as she charged out into the hall. 

“You know it! Kriffing pirates,” Kylo said, maneuvering frantically. “Quad gun well’s down there,” he said, gesturing at a hatch.

“On it,” she replied, already heading down. 

It was clear Kylo had asked his shipbuilder to model the turret bay after the Millennium Falcon’s. She could imagine him having handed the designer a drawing of his childhood memories of playing with toy ships in the bottom of the gun well with an instruction along the lines of, “but, you know, nice,” which was exactly the effect that had been achieved. The targeting computer was state of the art, and the wide transparisteel viewport kept the space combat feeling personal and engaging, not at all like a holofilm like some of the newer ships’ gun bays Rey had seen. And the controls and the cannons themselves were top-of-the-line and butter-smooth to operate. Rey was going to have real fun shooting these pirates, in short.

Which was lucky, because there were a surprisingly large number of pirates that required shooting.

“Sure are a lot of ‘em,” she shouted up.

“You don’t say,” he yelled back, his tone just slightly frantic, sounding so much like Han Solo it made her heart hurt.

“Ships mostly garbage though,” she continued. “Going to take the command ship and the bigger gunship first.”

“Roger that,” he called, and the _Needle_ executed a breathtakingly nimble barrel roll to avoid incoming fire. “I’ll get you in position.”

Rey had been on gunner-pilot teams a few times, either position suiting her well enough, though if she had to pick she’d pilot every time. But teaming with Kylo Ren was different. Once combat began in earnest, she never had to direct him. He knew where she needed to be to take the shot. She knew where he wanted her to shoot next. There was no need for cross chatter. A couple times he called down, “Your six,” and she’d shout back, “On it,” because she was in fact already rotating the well before he’d even mentioned it, and beyond that, the ship was eerily silent while the pirates were still a threat.

Once the command ship and three gunships were down, there were close to a dozen smaller snub fighters and assorted other one- or two-man craft. Rey could pick them off with a shot or two each, and targeting them was child’s play. Kylo took a couple more with the forward guns. The few survivors scattered.

“Never stood a chance,” Rey said, emerging from the gun well with a wide grin on her face. 

He whistled. “No kidding. We took a couple hits at the beginning but nothing serious.” 

“Scuff your chrome finish?” she joked.

He got a severe look on his face. “Better not have,” he grumbled as he pulled a lever. “Hyperspace in 5, 4…” he trailed off.

“We can buff it out on Castell,” she laughed, punching him playfully on the arm. “Don’t you worry, done it a million times.”

“With a ship this nice?” Kylo probed.

“Well, no,” she admitted. 

Rey could tell that neither of them wanted to talk about how fun that combat had been. They had been badly outnumbered and in mortal danger, but it had been an almost meditative experience, fighting a common enemy. It was something they’d done only once before, under very different circumstances. Then, it had felt right, but tense, unnerving. Now, it was _comfortable_. _Companionable_. When had that happened? “So, my grandfather…” he began.

“Right! Your grandfather,” Rey remembered. “He knows more than he’s saying; it feels like he has a pretty solid theory of what exactly we’re dealing with, and he wants to talk to you first to fill in some of the details before he lays out his theory. I don’t know if he knows how to fix it, but when I told him what was going on it was like he was watching a holodrama he’d already seen, if you know what I mean.”

“Interesting,” Kylo replied. “Did he tell you how I could contact him?”

“I think he’ll come to you.”

“Hm,” he grunted noncommittally. “I’d better go meditate, then.”

“How long to Castell?”

“Current trajectory, with no further surprises? Five days.”

“Want to pilot in shifts?”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “Not really necessary, autopilot can raise us if she needs us, but may as well if we don’t both feel an urgent need to sleep at the same time.” 

“It makes me feel better, especially right after, you know,” she waved a hand, “the nineteen spacecraft that ambushed us five minutes ago.”

“Was it nineteen?” They exchanged bloodthirsty grins. 

“Go meditate. Meet your grandfather,” she said, pushing past him to look out the view screen and nudging him out of the pilot’s seat with her elbow. “I’ve got the stick.”

“Thanks,” he said. She wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for.

#

Once Kylo had disappeared into his quarters Rey rummaged around the galley cupboards looking for snacks. She turned up a number of promising-looking bags, boxes, and tubes, but didn’t recognize any of them; this wasn’t surprising as she hadn’t really grown up with packaged snack food and certainly hadn’t grown up with the same options as Kylo Ren. 

After a minute of pondering she shrugged and went with the moss chips. The package indicated they were “extra spicy grassgrain” flavor, which meant nothing to her, but in general she liked spicy foods. She grabbed a bottle of bean juice from the refrigeration unit and returned to the cockpit.

She was pretty sure Kylo would be horrified to discover her eating chips and drinking juice with her feet up on the control panel, which was why it gave her so much pleasure to do it. She could feel him settling into his meditation in the Force and knew he wouldn’t be out for a while, whether Anakin managed to make contact or not. Plenty of time to clean up any incriminating evidence. She popped open the tube of chips.

“Whew,” she exhaled as her eyes watered. “Extra spicy is right. They don’t kriff around on,” she checked the tube for a planet of origin, “Ojom. Hm.” Rey had no idea where Ojom was. 

The next few hours passed in meditative silence. Occasional disturbances in the Force made Rey suspect that grandfather-grandson contact had been made, and the two strong personalities were attempting to come to some sort of understanding. Hyperspace sped by on the viewscreen, and Rey had plenty of time to catch up on holonews, do one-handed handstands, and try and fail to find Clone Wars history lessons on the legit holonet. She wasn’t sure how to access the “somewhat less legit” holonet from Kylo’s terminal and didn’t want to raise any flags. 

She wondered idly how the Resistance had commemorated General Organa’s passing. The news that she had died hadn’t hit the holonet yet, but of course it was only a matter of time. 

And of course the First Order would take credit, and claim she’d been killed in some kind of deep intel operation requiring months of logistical preparation, a squadron of the most highly trained special ops troopers, and one lucky break, usually a Resistance spy making a mortifyingly sloppy mistake, or else falling hopelessly in love with a First Order officer and tearfully confessing everything after a romantic dinner with just enough partial nudity to be worth watching - all the elements of a completely fabricated “documentary” holodrama, in other words, which would almost certainly go into production within the week. Once she had joined the Resistance the propaganda formulas had become so painfully obvious that she was surprised anyone fell for them. But of course, if there was nobody to tell you the truth, what else were you supposed to think? You could know that the holodramas probably weren’t true, but that was no substitute for actually knowing what was. 

Rey missed the New Republic. Their news wasn’t always true either, necessarily, but at least it was a bit more creative than the same six plots recycled over and over again. The holonews could be so  _banal_ now.

Anyway. She could savor the knowledge that only she and Kylo Ren would ever know that in fact, the Supreme Leader of the First Order could in fact take some sort of partial credit for Leia Organa’s passing. Ironic.

Rey’s stomach made a discontented sound, and a glance at the chrono revealed the shocking fact that almost a full day cycle had passed while Rey faffed around on the holonet eating moss chips. Had she fallen asleep? 

She walked by Kylo’s quarters and pressed her ear to the door. Not a sound to be heard. This was a little worrisome - it was a long time to be in solitary meditation - but this was a rather exceptional circumstance. Rey tiptoed back to the galley and fixed some instant noodles. All the forks were in the sonic washer so she picked up some one-use grubsticks. She had been trying to learn how to use the karking things for months after Poe had given her a hard time about not knowing how, as if she’d ever eaten with any sort of utensil before she left Jakku. Still, it was a _little_ embarrassing, so she figured now was a great time to take her time with them and get some good practice in.

“Kriff,” she muttered to herself as her fingers tangled in them. How did everyone make this look so simple? One fell in the broth and the other on the table. 

Of course Kylo chose that minute to emerge into the main cabin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, still pregnant!


	8. Chapter 8

He raised an eyebrow. “Grubsticks?” he asked.

Rey rolled her eyes as she tried to reposition them in one hand with the other hand’s help. “I’m trying to seem less like I grew up eating add-water portions with my bare hands. Apparently you can take the girl off Jakku but it’s a bit harder to take the Jakku off the girl.” She growled at her hand. “How is it possible that it’s easier to do a one-handed handstand than to eat instant noodles with a pair of sticks?”

He took the sticks from her and repositioned them in his hand. “Like this,” he said, then put them back in hers. He observed her incompetently clicking them for a few seconds, then said, “Rey, are you a Jedi or not?”

“What?” she huffed out, beyond irritated.

“Use the _Force_, you moof-milker,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“That’s cheating!”

“Humor me,” he replied.

Rey tried using the Force to coordinate the grubsticks' motion with her fingers’ motion. He was right, it was easier going. “But that’s a misuse of the Force.” 

“Just while you’re getting used to them,” he assured her. “Once you’ve got it down with the Force, you can stop and it’ll be just as simple without.”

She scoffed, but kept using the Force to keep her grubsticks in line as she continued. “Did you learn to use these at Jedi school?” she asked suspiciously. 

“Ha! No,” he laughed. “My mother timed me moving uncooked rice grains from one bowl to another with grubsticks until I could use them effortlessly. Took two weeks of daily practice. We were going to have an Asogian ambassador come for dinner, someone she had known as a teen and thought she had a good chance to convince to advocate on Brodo Asogi to join the New Republic, and she said it could be a ‘diplomatic disaster’ if her son couldn’t eat with grubsticks. Apparently the uncooked rice is how her mother taught her, too.” 

“How’d the dinner go?”

“Fine,” he said. “Impeccable grubstick technique. I spoke when spoken to.” He shrugged. “Had a lot of those sorts of dinners as a kid, they all kind of blend together. But I do remember he specifically mentioned that I was very skilled with my grubsticks for such a little boy. I can’t have been more than five standard. She gave me a preserved zherry after he left as a treat.”

“Did his planet join the New Republic?”

“Who cares?” Kylo turned around. “Kriffing everything in my childhood was about whether or not I was going to cause a diplomatic incident. Where was that noodle cup? Forgot I had them. They smell good.” 

Rey momentarily tried to imagine not being absolutely certain of her exact inventory of food. But there were things of which her imagination was simply incapable. “Second left. So how was it with Anakin?”

“How do you know I contacted him?”

“You’d been in there for, what, ten standard hours?” She decided not to mention she’d felt it in the Force. “What else could have happened? You aren’t patient enough to sit there waiting so long with no results.”

“Impossible.” He looked at the chrono. “I see. Possible,” he corrected himself. He poured boiling water into the noodles and removed another pair of grubsticks from their plasto wrap. 

“So?”

“He’s…interesting.”

“Yes,” she agreed tentatively. “Did he have any thoughts on the nightmares?”

“Some,” he said vaguely. “I know this concerns both of us, but I need to think before I can talk about it.”

“I see. Okay.”

“I can take the stick,” he said. “Force knows I’ve spent enough time with my eyes shut today.”

“Thanks,” Rey replied, fishing the last noodle out with her Force-enhanced grubsticks and then picking up the cup to drink her broth. “I’ll be in my bunk.”

#

Rey struggled with her conscience as she lay on her bed. She was sure Kylo would feel annoyed and hurt if she were to immediately try to contact Anakin and find out what they’d talked about. At the same time, boy, was she ever curious. 

She lay down on the bed, thinking she’d try to sleep on it, but not optimistic about dropping off. After all, she’d been sitting most of the day. But once she was horizontal she was surprised to feel her eyelids begin to grow heavy.

She opened them again and found herself in a meadow. It was an unfamiliar place - nothing about it even reminded her of a place she had been before. She sat up and looked around. She felt a presence in the Force that she knew she’d felt before, many times, but couldn’t immediately place. It had the metallic whiff of Anakin, but was warmer; more disciplined, but no less dangerous. Who was it?

“I’m dreaming,” she said. 

“Yes,” she heard a familiar voice say.

Rey whipped her head around. “General!” she blurted. 

“Leia,” she was gently corrected.

“Sorry,” Rey replied. “Ben said you were - ”

“I am,” she said. “But that’s not why we’re here.”

“Where is this, anyway?”

“Alderaan. I imagine you’ve never heard of it.”

“No, I have,” Rey said. “I asked Poe where you were from once. But I don’t know where it is.”

“Was,” Leia said. She sat down on the grass beside Rey.

“Ben took your passing hard,” Rey said. “Harder than I thought.”

“Me too. I didn’t think he cared that strongly any more. I was selfish to leave when I did.”

Rey put an arm around Leia’s shoulder. “I don’t think so.” 

“I’d lost so much.”

“But even if you hadn’t. You’re his mother. You wanted to see him one last time, and then you could go.”

Leia smiled wistfully. They had a view into a bucolic valley. A herd of nerfs chewed grasses and flowers before them. “This was the loveliest planet, Rey.”

“What happened to it?”

“Blown up by Grand Moff Tarkin as a demonstration of the first Death Star’s power.”

Rey was floored. “What a waste.”

“And the worst of it is, not even a lifetime later, and nobody knows Alderaan’s name.”

“So much has been erased. But I’m surprised Alderaan was. You’d think the New Republic would have used it as a rallying cry.”

“The Empire framed the Rebellion for Alderaan’s destruction. By the time we took power, it was too impossible to correct the record. The power elite knew what had happened, and most of them even believed it, but across the galaxy, there was confusion and conspiracy theory about who had been to blame for Alderaan and what had happened there. It was - safer, I suppose, not to bring it up, not to remind people how recently so many of us in the New Republic government had recently been discussed in the press as terrorists and worse. The Empire wrote the history there, and no amount of fixing the textbooks could fix what people remembered seeing in the headlines the day Alderaan was blown up. Easier, then, just to let it fade away. That was what we thought. But when the First Order destroyed the Hosnian system…”

“You wished you’d made the truth about Alderaan stick, no matter the cost.”

“I wished I’d been able to draw the line clearly between one and the other. To say, look, this is what these people will do. This is what they _keep_ doing.” Her right hand made a fist that made Rey think of Anakin. Or, more accurately, of Vader.

“Do you think it’ll ever stop, Leia?” Rey asked, turning to face Leia in despair and wishing, for the millionth time, that she’d ever known her own mother. “Will this history ever stop repeating itself? Will these cycles ever just _quit_?”

Leia made eye contact. “You aren’t just talking about blowing up planets.”

“I don’t want to give birth to the next Anakin Skywalker.” Tears welled out of her eyes. “And it’s starting to feel inevitable that I will. I mean, I try to be positive about it. I know crying never fixed anything, and I want to _solve_ it, not sit around moaning about it. That’s how I’ve survived - the only way I ever have. But it’s really starting to get to me. What if despite my best efforts I end up stuck with this baby? What if it turns out - well, _bad_? You understand.”

“Better than anyone, maybe,” Leia said quietly.

“Ben isn’t Vader,” Rey said, almost reflexively.

“No,” Leia agreed. “Your child wouldn’t be either. There would be differences. Of course. Ben was my heart’s dearest desire, conceived in love. Yours would be…” she trailed off.

“Not that,” Rey completed with a grimace. “Far from that.”

“I don’t know, Rey,” Leia said. “I’m not the person to ask. For me, history has been a spiraling narrative. We find ourselves over and over in a place near where we began. But the Force works in its own way, and that side of history? I only feel the ripples. I seldom see the stones.”

“I know,” Rey said. They were silent together a long time, watching the meadow, feeling the breeze. “Leia, why doesn’t Luke talk to me?”

“He does that,” Leia grumbled. “Disappears like that. Give him time.”

“There’s so much I want to ask him.” They sat quietly for a few minutes, watching the nerfs in the distance. Rey wondered what it must have been like to be from a planet like this. Rey wondered what it must have been like, to know you could never, ever go back to a planet like this. She put her head on Leia’s shoulder. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

“I wouldn’t trust your nanobots, by the way,” Leia said. “I have a bad feeling about those things.”

“What?” 

“As I said - nothing concrete. Just - verify you aren’t pregnant another way.” 

“What do you suggest?”

But before Leia could reply, Rey jolted awake.

#

“Is something wrong?” Rey asked, peeping her head out of her room. 

“No, clear lanes. Why?”

“Something woke me up.”

“Short little nap. I didn’t even finish my noodles.” He held some up to demonstrate.

“Yeah, frustrating,” Rey replied. “A dream I had just shook my confidence in my nanobots, which,” she said, trailing off.

“Which are a thing we really want to have confidence in. Do they have any sort of self-diagnostic routine?”

“Yes, but if they’re compromised by some sort of Force interference, I wouldn’t trust that either.”

“Fair point,” he said through a mouthful of noodles. “Well, what do you want to do? I’ll confess I’m completely ignorant as to your options here.”

“Well, the unfortunate thing is that I’m out of the supplies to do early chemical abortions myself, and I need to go to a Resistance-friendly clinic to get them. Even if my nanobots _were_ functioning, that would be the case.”

“I see.”

“Although…you’re Supreme Leader, couldn’t you just _order_ somebody to give you some?”

Kylo Ren burst into hearty laughter as Rey eyed him quizzically. He ended up laughing so hard he had trouble stopping, and the giggles turned into coughs and wheezes by the end. 

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Rey said, her face and voice sour. “Aren’t you meant to be a military dictator?”

“I don’t think you understand how authoritarian surveillance states work, Rey,” Kylo said, still chuckling. “You have absolutely no idea the alerts that pop up in the system when highly placed officers try to buy contraceptives or, oh my god, abortifacients. It’d be a scandal. Especially _me_.”

“What, you mean I have more reproductive freedom than you? I’m wanted in dozens of systems but I can go to a clinic and get what I need!”

“Of course you can. The First Order doesn’t _want_ the likes of _you_ reproducing.” He shook his head. “They’d prefer you dead posthaste, but if you’ve got to be alive, at least you aren’t passing on your ideology. Frankly, I’m surprised you weren’t sterilized. Lots of planets have mass sterilization programs in place now for the poor. I guess it’s just that you’re human.”

“You people sure have a lot of charming beliefs,” Rey murmured, aghast that he was able to talk so casually about such a monstrous policy. 

“Never one of my personal hobbyhorses,” Kylo shrugged. “I had to scramble and falsify my own identichip to get a vasectomy, and wear a disguise, and go to a very shady doctor on the lowest level of Coruscant I’d ever been to, and pay a good half-dozen steep bribes in Hutt currency to even get that far. I got attacked four times between the elevator and the clinic. And that was for myself, not trying to obtain contraband for someone else. You’ll have an easier time finding a Resistance-friendly clinic than I would trying to obtain any of this stuff for you. Trust me. Tracking down resources to even make the attempt would take just as long as you getting to a clinic. We don’t have the luxury of time that I did.” 

“Sounds like it,” Rey mused, feeling with some annoyance that there _had_ to be a way this was possible that Kylo just hadn’t considered, but not familiar enough with the First Order to be able to call him on his defeatist attitude with any confidence. She heaved a big sigh. “Well, looks like I’m going to have to cross-check our planned route with my own records. You’ll forgive me if I want to do this in my quarters? It really wouldn’t do to have the Supreme Leader see my map of Resistance-friendly institutions.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll definitely learn about at least one, though, as I assume we’ll add a stop.”

“We’ll see,” Rey said, tapping her nose as she retreated to her quarters.

#

Rey unlocked her boxy, aging datapad and accessed the custom map of Resistance clinics, supply stations, repair shops and other necessary resources. This was a useful map, but it was also only a first step. Due to the sensitivity of working with the Resistance, the map was only updated through a hard connection; the Resistance required any field operatives to be at a Resistance base plugged into a Resistance computer to get the latest version. And, due again to the sensitivity of working with the Resistance, the map fell out of date depressingly quickly as sympathizers were intimidated, pressured, or killed and were no longer available to offer services to the Resistance.

All this meant was that finding a convenient location was only a first step; this had to be followed up with independent research on whether the clinic still existed, whether the doctor still worked there or was in fact still alive, and so forth.

She hit a few buttons and the map projected in three dimensions before her, and got to work. It wasn’t even worth looking at Core and Colonies planets; there was too much enforcement to even bother trying to operate a clinic. Even the Inner Rim wasn’t usually a great bet, as there was simply too much turnover. A clinic on Atzerri looked like a good prospect but she searched on the doctor’s name and discovered she’d been arrested three months prior. No joy.

Thus rebuffed, Rey shifted her focus to clinics along the Perlimian Trade Route, their planned path to Castell and beyond. But they had been few to begin with and had almost all been raided and shut down recently, in high-profile operations. Most were accused of being fronts for the spice trade or slavers. It was clear that the First Order had begun a crackdown of medical facilities that refused to submit to the surveillance requirements Kylo had just mentioned. And apparently they had just made a pass down the Perlimian Trade Route, picking them off as they went. As far as Rey could tell, the whole Resistance list along that particular hyperspace lane was obsolete.

Rey huffed an exasperated sigh. This kind of medical-care search was frustrating under the best of circumstances, and this could not be described that way at all.

“All right,” she muttered to the map. “What about the Hydian Way?”

At first it seemed equally fruitless. A likely-looking clinic on Bogden seemed to have shut down proactively just weeks previous. But when she expanded her search to planets not quite on the route itself, she noticed a Doctor Mini Sorco on Taris who actually picked up a holocall. 

“I was wondering, are you still offering allergy vaccinations for tookas?” Rey asked. This was the absurd passphrase Resistance field agents had been instructed to use when calling clinics to ask if Resistance medical services were provided. Rey had always wondered whether any clueless civilians had shown up with sniffling tookas, hoping to get them their shots. It didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. 

“Definitely! When were you thinking?”

Rey’s mind raced. Taris was off their planned route, so she wasn’t sure. “Say, ten standard out? I’m not entirely sure.”

“I’ll make a note it’s tentative. Can you tell me your tooka's serial code?”

“Q-1138.”

Rey could hear tapping in the background. “I see,” said the doctor. “Very…interesting case.” Medical records could be requested through a Resistance encrypted system that had always made Rey a bit nervous. She’d never had medical care by any sort of trained professional before joining the Resistance and the idea that people she’d never even met could just… _look things up_ about her injuries and ailments felt like a violation of all sorts of privacy assumptions.

“It’s only gotten more interesting. My poor tooka,” she said, hamming it up for the benefit of anyone who might be listening. “Sneezing up a storm just like last time.”

“Sorry to hear that,” the doctor replied. “Anything I can help you with remotely?”

“I don’t think so, no,” Rey replied. “I’ll try to be in touch if I need to come sooner or later, all right?”

“Sounds like a plan.” The doctor closed the connection.

Rey heaved a frustrated sigh. Great. They were going to have to change their whole route, and who knew if the clinic would still exist by the time they arrived.

#

“Ever been to Taris?” Rey asked without preamble as she exited her quarters.

“Nope,” Kylo said, chewing on some sort of colorful jelly, his voice muffled. “Why?”

“I think we’re going to have to detour if I’m to get to Resistance medical care.”

“Ah. I was afraid of that,” he replied. He opened up the chart and knitted his eyebrows. “That _is_ out of the way,” he said. “Nothing on our original vector?”

“Not that I could find. It seems there’s been a recent crackdown, and I haven’t got the latest clinics guide, so I don’t know if people have moved or just been arrested or worse. You sure you can’t pull some Supreme Leader strings?”

“I really don’t think it’d help,” he said. “Well, looking at our fuel reserves, we may as well just go all the way to Taris. We’ve got plenty. Given we don’t have a clear destination at the moment, it doesn’t really matter if we go a bit in the wrong direction. Maybe that will turn out to have been the right move in retrospect, anyway. It looks like the First Order presence on-planet is minimal at the moment, so we may be able to go at least somewhat incognito.”

“In this flashy ship? I don’t think so.” 

“You really never know. Sometimes you show up on an urban planet and everyone is driving something like this. In any case, she certainly isn’t a well-known starship or anything like that - and she has a few tricks up her sleeve.”

“What sort of tricks,” Rey narrowed her eyes.

“Wait and see,” he replied.

“Did you just _wink_?” Rey wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating.

“Do I seem like the sort of person who winks, Rey?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll amend our vector to Taris. We should be there in six standard if nothing else interesting happens.” 

“Thanks.” Rey was silent for a minute, staring out at the hyperspace flicker. “Any interest in a spar?”

“Always,” he grinned, popping the last of his jellies into his mouth as he stood.

The next few days passed in a blur of sparring, cooking lessons, uneventful meditation, and restless but dreamless sleep. Rey felt disturbances in the Force every time Kylo had a nightmare, but shrank from mentioning it to him, for fear he’d be upset. They seemed to get worse and worse the closer they got to the Core.

Rey became increasingly sure she was pregnant again. Just a feeling. Her nanobots were suspiciously silent on the topic of her reproductive status. So, perhaps geography wasn’t the source of the worsening nightmares. Perhaps it was the Force, or some malevolent actor communicating with Kylo’s brain through the Force, gloating. Rey didn’t mention any of this, either. She was too busy trying not to think about it.

As the days passed, it was clear even meditation was no longer able to calm Kylo’s agitated mind. He stopped joking, stopped even pretending to be friendly. He began to remind Rey of nobody so much as Snoke’s Kylo Ren, back from when they’d first met, back when it had seemed so plausible that he might torture her, and so implausible that he could be the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. It seemed like a century ago that he’d been so distant and desperate. They still sparred - it had become the only thing that could command his focus - but the joy felt drawn out of it.

“It got us, didn’t it,” he said one day at the end of a session. “You’re pregnant, and we don’t know if or when we can get our hands on more medication.”

“I’m not certain,” she said tentatively. 

“I am,” he said, as grim as she was hesitant. 

She faltered. “Well,” she began, and wasn’t sure how to continue. The young women in Niima outpost had known of some ways to take care of these things, and of course Rey had been taught, when she was old enough. But they were dangerous, and required herbs Rey didn’t know how to name off Jakku. And any pertinent information had of course been scrubbed from the HoloNet.

“We’ll just have to make it to Taris,” he said with a sigh, as if up to now he hadn’t personally believed that was going to happen, but it had become a necessity. “Just a few more hours until we’re supposed to be there.”

Rey didn’t tell him how likely she thought it was that the clinic would be ransacked and deserted when they got there. If they were lucky.

“I could go back to the Resistance,” she ventured. “We could take a hiatus.”

But the look on his face - she didn’t even know what feelings those were. 

“I need this _solved_, Rey,” he whispered. “It’s your body, it’s my _soul_.” 

Part of Rey balked at that; the very notion that pregnancy didn’t affect one’s soul! How self-centered could one man be? 

But she could see he was falling apart, right there in front of her, day by day. Was it that she was made of sterner stuff, a weapon forged in harsher fires? Or was it just that the pain and fear and helplessness were so different for each of them? And then, she reminded herself, he’d just lost his mother. And she had seen Leia since, in her dream, she thought. It had been such a balm to talk to her, to see her planet. And she knew, knew for a fact, that he had not. Her intuition told her that he had never been to Alderaan in a dream, and probably never would.

“What if we don’t find what we need on Taris,” she whispered back, not intoned as a question.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice breaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, I had the baby! Sorry I missed Thursday :D
> 
> Some of the stuff in this chapter about Alderaan's significance in the historical record is probably misaligned with canon. But it feels right to me anyway, so...


	9. Chapter 9

Kylo’s promised “tricks” regarding the conspicuousness of the  _Needle_ turned out to be well worth whatever credits he’d shelled out. The ship sported not only a standard cloaking device, but also a “camouflage” mode that made it look, well, rather like garbage. They landed on Taris with no issues and no attention, and Kylo decided to stay with the ship while Rey ran her errand. She was a day early for the appointment but hoped they would be able to fit her in.

“I have a bad feeling about this, Rey,” he said as she packed up her rucksack.

“When was the last time you had a good feeling, though?” 

“Point,” he replied tragically, watching her pull on her boots with a troubled frown. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic. “May the Force be with you.” 

Rey startled to hear him say such a - well, a Jedi-ism, wasn’t it? She’d only ever heard it from Jedi fellow-travelers. “And also with you,” she replied reflexively as she strode down the ramp and was gone. He didn’t seem to notice he’d said it, or that it was odd. Rey was more worried than she could admit to herself about leaving him alone with his thoughts and his lightsaber for even a couple of hours. 

She tested the encrypted two-way medium-range comm unit she’d thankfully brought with her from the Resistance before she got too far. “You there?” They’d decided not to use codenames, after a brief conversation about what their codenames might be if they were to choose some. All suggestions felt silly.

“Yup,” she heard back.

“Sound clear?”

“Crystal.”

Taris was a strange planet. The clinic was on the “poor” side of the planet, which had been devastated by some unspecified long-ago environmental disaster. They’d flown over glittering skyscrapers to this maze of shacks and decommissioned containers, landing in a random clear spot between two crashed starships. It felt strangely homey to Rey, who hadn’t ever been to another planet where people so routinely made homes in broken-down aircraft, but also familiar was that there seemed to be a profound lack of clear organizing principle around most details of life on-planet for the lower-class population. This meant that the clinic itself was very, very hard to locate. Rey had coordinates, but getting to them was a challenge; there did not appear to be vehicles for rent or hire, the speeder Kylo kept on the  _Needle_ was a very, very eye-catching model, and the location where they’d been able to land was at least an hour’s walk from where she needed to be. Rey tried not to think about what would happen if she needed to make a quick getaway. Stealing vehicles from poor folks wasn’t something she liked to make a habit of.

It was good to be off the ship, though. Good to be out breathing fresh-ish air, walking a distance, seeing a new place. Rey tried to enjoy the positives. 

When she was within a reasonably short distance of where the clinic was supposed to be, Rey knew she was going to have to ask around for directions. The area was not commercial - no place she’d seen on Taris really could be described as commercial or residential - but there was enough foot traffic that she knew she’d be able to find someone who could help. And, to her great joy, she hadn’t seen any evidence of First Order activity at all. 

“Pardon me,” she said to a passing human. “Do you speak Basic?”

The first three didn’t. The fourth, a middle-aged woman with one clear green glass eye and a vivid shock of bright white hair, did. “Who’s asking?”

“I’m a traveller from off planet. I’m trying to find a Doctor Mini Sorco, whose office is supposed to be near here.” 

Rey’s conversation partner narrowed her eyes, pulled out a stun stick, and shocked Rey unconscious before she even knew it had happened.

#

When Rey came to, she was indoors, in a dark and cramped apartment, seated on a bed. At first she wasn’t sure what had happened. But her arms were tied together behind her back, and the woman from before was glaring at her, a blaster in her hand. 

“Hope that’s set to stun,” Rey said in a joking tone.

“You sure do,” the woman replied.

Rey winced. “Look, I’m - I think we  _must_ have got off on the wrong foot, though I’m not sure how.” 

“Mini Sorco hasn’t lived on this planet for six months. And she left in a way that made her a _deeply_ unpopular person.”

“I just spoke to her last week to make an appointment!”

“You were seeing her as a _patient_?” the woman said incredulously.

“Of course! Why else?”

Rey’s interrogator broke into hearty laughter  at Rey’s plainly sincere bafflement. “Oh for kriff’s sake,” she gasped. “I just assumed with that Core accent you were from the First Order! Dr Sorco vanished overnight when it became, very suddenly, undeniable that she had been performing a number of pharmacological experiments and collecting genetic information on her patients without their knowledge and consent and transmitting it with their identity information to Coruscant.”

“Well! I’m sure glad I ran into you before I - wait, though. She made an appointment with me for three days from now and, as I said, I spoke to her - or someone answering her comm - just last week.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Right. We’d better go find out who’s in her office, then,” she said, with an undertone of “or die trying.” 

“I…I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Rey said. “Ordinarily this is the kind of adventure I’d be interested in having, but I was going to see her about a very - a sensitive concern. I don’t think whoever the First Order has waiting for us is someone we’re going to want to take on by ourselves.”

“Oh really,” replied the woman, suspicious again. “Just who are you, exactly?”

Rey did not want to make herself sound like a big deal, but wasn’t sure how to impress upon her new friend just how dangerous the person in Mini Sorco’s office might be without laying it on a bit thick. “Look, can you keep a secret?”

“Where necessary.”

“I’m with the Resistance.” 

“_Which_ Resistance?” the woman asked impatiently. 

“I - what?” Rey had expected this big reveal to get a more breathless reception than a request for disambiguation.

“There are only half a dozen ‘Resistance’ organizations in this sector. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Really! Well, I’m from the - the original one, I suppose? The Leia Organa one?”

“Ah! I see. Dr. Sorco did have a number of patients in various Resistance movements, so that bit checks out. But I don’t see why that would mean we’d have to be especially careful, I mean, surely your organization is pretty large? How much firepower would the First Order really spend on one operative?”

Rey was pondering whether it would be appropriate to just lay it out: well, this particular operative is wanted in the entire galaxy for taking out the last Supreme Leader, so, I don’t know, maybe some _pretty big guns_, when they both turned their heads at the sound of a scuffling behind the exterior wall of the apartment followed by the unmistakable  _snap-hiss_ of a lightsaber. 

“Free my hands,” Rey hissed in terror as she saw the tip of a red lightsaber penetrate the wall, unsure who’d be on the other side but very sure she wanted to be armed when they made it the rest of the way through. “Free my kriffing hands, _now_,” she said again, this time putting Force compulsion behind the words. 

“Roger that,” the woman said as she freed Rey’s hands, leaving Rey uncertain whether the compulsion or simple fear had done the job. Rey turned on her lightsaber as a section of wall fell away, revealing…

…Revealing Kylo Ren, purple circles like bruises under both eyes, looking even more pathetic and sleep-deprivation-crazed than he’d looked when Rey’d left him a few short hours ago. 

They both lowered their lightsabers immediately, then turned them off again. “What are you doing here?” Rey said, suddenly calm, not knowing why she would be calm.

“I - you weren’t answering your comm. Is this the doctor?”

“No, this is - actually, I never got your name.” 

“Nayra,” the woman said, her eyes darting between them warily. 

“This is Nayra. I asked her for directions to the doctor’s and there was a, er, misunderstanding…”

“Are those _lightsabers_?” Nayra squeaked.

“The doctor isn’t - it was a trap, there is no doctor,” Rey said. “We need to get off planet before someone alerts whoever set me up that a pair of absolute _water tossers_ are over here playing with lightsabers, because we are in very very close proximity to said trap and you are _not subtle_,” she growled, stepping through the hole and grabbing Kylo’s arm as she broke into a run in the direction instinct told her was the way back to where they’d parked the _Needle_. “Sorry about the wall!” she shouted back at Nayra.

“Wait, I - ” Nayra shouted back, and then the blaster fire began. 

“Kriff!” Kylo shouted, pulling Rey behind cover. 

“You better hope none of these First Order idiots recognize you without the mask,” Rey spat, deflecting bolts back at the shooters. “What the pfassk was that stunt back there? You couldn’t knock?”

“You’ve been gone six hours, no communication! We agreed I’d come out after five, what else was I supposed to do?”

“Six - really!” Rey said. “She must have zapped me harder than I thought. Did you walk here?”

“Borrowed a speeder.” 

“Borrowed,” Rey said skeptically, still deflecting.

“Commandeered,” he corrected with a shrug.

“Stole. Where is it?”

“Down there,” he said, pointing. Sure enough, there was a speeder parked by a tangle of vines three levels below.

“Jump?”

“Sure.” They waited briefly for a short break in the fire, then ran and jumped, landing on slippery, thorny vines and struggling for their footing.

“Didn’t see the - ow - the thorns from up there,” Rey winced, scrambling into the speeder. 

“No avoiding them,” Kylo replied, starting up the speeder as the blaster fire began again. 

Rey turned around and began deflecting the bolts as Kylo piloted. She could hear speeder bikes starting up nearby. “Hoping you remember how to get back to the ship.”

“Of course.” 

“Hoping it’s still there when we get to it. These sleemos have my Resistance identicode, as I had to give it on the comm to make the appointment, and for all I know they know it’s me; I have no idea what kind of reinforcements they brought in.”

“Blast,” Kylo grunted. 

“Why didn’t _you_ know about this?”

“Oh, because I know every clandestine op that happens across the galaxy?”

“Are you telling me they _don’t_ run plans to capture the murderer of the previous Supreme Leader past the current Supreme Leader?”

“Apparently not!” he snapped, frustrated, and clipped a corner. Rey almost tumbled off the side of the speeder but caught a cable with three fingers. As she struggled to get back onto the listing speeder, one of the blaster bolts hit the engine casing, and there was a pop. Smoke began to pour out the side.

“Gonna have to run?” she yelled at him.

“Still got one engine, rerouting power,” he shouted back. “Hold on tighter.” 

Rey mouthed “go kriff yourself,” still angry with him for charging in like a wilding happabore with his very distinctive weapon and tipping off whoever it was to their location, but didn’t say it as she resumed hitting blaster bolts back at speeder bikes. They were on a long, wide stretch and she was finally able to see all of them. There were seven still going; she’d taken out two. 

“Have a blaster, by any chance?” she asked.

He grabbed one off the passenger seat and handed it to her. She clipped her lightsaber back to her belt and went on the offensive, picking off three troopers in three shots, missing with the fourth and fifth, hitting two more with her sixth and seventh. There. Two were more manageable. “How far to the ship?”

“Not far! But I don’t think this speeder is going to make it.” Indeed, the vehicle was wheezing desperately and belching out smoke and sparks with each mode shift.

“Better take out these two bikes then,” Rey confirmed, hitting one, then missing the other with six shots in a row. The speeder spun to a halt and Rey fell off the side again. As she landed she reignited her lightsaber and took out the last speeder bike pilot as he scrambled to stop and apprehend them. “Got us a new ride,” she said grimly. “Think it’ll hold both of us?”

“Not for long, but we don’t need long,” he replied. “I’ve got to sit on the front though, or this thing’ll tip; these one-man bikes really don’t allow for a passenger, so it’s lucky you aren’t very big. You can tuck in behind me.”

“Cosy,” she remarked, then wished she hadn’t. 

Kylo started up the bike without further comment. They couldn’t converse over the sound of the bike, and Rey felt herself blushing furiously as she clung to his rock-solid torso to stay on. She wasn’t  _really_ attracted to Kylo Ren, at least not in a way that was sensible or practical in the slightest, but in moments like these it was difficult to think of anything other than how long it had been since she’d gotten laid. She reflected bitterly that it didn’t seem fair she was pregnant with his baby when she hadn’t had even the slightest hint of ass in fifteen standard months. It wasn’t like she was an old-style Jedi who wasn’t supposed to. She just hadn’t had a kriffing minute to pursue it.

So of course her heart was going a little fast when this was the nearest she’d been to a human man in an eon, and said human man happened to be positioned directly between her legs. On a distractingly vibrating speeder bike, which his annoyingly muscular body was piloting annoyingly competently given the situation. It wasn’t anything _personal_. So why did it seem like she couldn’t help but snuggle in just a little closer, she asked herself. 

And then they had arrived at the well-disguised _Needle_, and Kylo was braking so hard they both fell off the front of the off-balance bike, and they were under fire again and running for the ramp while firing blasters over their shoulders. 

#

“We better hope this thing starts!” Rey shouted as they ran into the starship. “Who knows if they’ve had a chance to tamper with it while you were off heroically rescuing me.”

“Sorry, _princess_,” he snarled, “seemed to me you really did need at least a little rescuing.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” she threw back at him, clambering down into the gun well. Someone was hitting them hard with an energy cannon. The shields seemed to be holding, and she shot back, but there was so much glare and debris she couldn’t tell exactly where the fire was coming from.

One of the cannons got a solid hit in on an engine. “Kriff,” she heard from above, and winced. That had sounded very, very bad. 

“Hyperdrive?” she shouted up.

“You know it!”

“Can we get off planet?”

“Better hope they don’t have anyone in orbit!”

“Is it totally shot?”

“No, but it’s leaking fuel. I might be able to get us a couple planets away, but that’s as good as it gets.”

“It’ll have to be good enough,” Rey shouted back, still trying to target the cannon as they moved out of range.

Once they left the atmosphere she felt the hyperdrive engage, and she climbed back out of the gun well. There was an unhealthy kick to the shift into hyperspace. “You sure the ship can handle this?”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m sure. I calculate we can land on,” he squinted at the star chart, “Dathomir.” 

“Huh. Never heard of it.” 

“Me neither. Probably a good sign, all things considered.”

“Or a very, very bad one,” she replied.


	10. Chapter 10

A few noisy and chaotic minutes later they were making a crunchy, tricky landing on Dathomir. 

“I really hope nobody followed us here, because this ship isn’t going anywhere for a while,” Kylo remarked as he pored over the diagnostics, looking utterly worn out. “Did you see any signs of civilization? I have a reasonable repair kit, but it’s likely we’ll need parts.”

“Nothing I could see on our flight path, but things were a bit hectic,” Rey admitted. “Do you want me to take a look around on the ground while you take stock of what the _Needle_’s going to need? Do you know if the atmosphere’s breathable?”

“Let’s stay together,” he said. “Things seem to go better when we stay together. And I’m not sure I like the feeling of this planet.”

“Suit yourself,” she shrugged. “Want me to take a crack at some repairs?”

“Have you worked on Nubians before?”

“Sonny boy, I’ve worked on _everything_.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll take a look at the hyperdrive, but I think the landing gear is probably pretty messed up too, and I know you’re more likely to be able to fit your arms in that housing than I am.” 

“On it,” she said. She climbed the ladder into the hold where the landing gear housing could be found with her tools and her headlamp and started rooting around. Things were pretty banged up, but nothing critical; if Kylo had an arc welder handy Rey could very easily mend what needed mending. As she was getting ready to head back up to ask him where he kept his welding things, she felt a sudden tug in the Force. 

She wasn’t sure what it meant. But all of a sudden it felt very, very important to get out and see what was on Dathomir.

“Hey, Kylo?” she said, approaching him. “You probably have an arc welder on board, right?”

“Of course. Room 3 on the hall along with all the other tools.”

“Okay, great. I think that’s all I need. How’s the hyperdrive?”

“Beyond farkled,” he sighed. 

“Budge over. I’ve managed to salvage a few hyperdrives I’d have described as ‘beyond farkled’ in my short life,” she said with no hint of a brag, appraising the machinery with a practiced eye. “But right now I’m getting a very strong feeling that I need to get to the surface. Would you mind if I did just a little look around before we get into mending?”

“That’s odd, because I’m getting a very strong feeling that I need to stay on the ship.” 

“_Interesting_,” Rey said. 

“Specifically, I’m getting a sense that this planet is very strong in the dark side of the Force. And it feels deeply hostile to me, _personally_. It’s a little…concerning…that such a dark planet would be trying to draw you in and separate us.” 

“That is concerning…” Rey concurred, tilting her head as if listening for faint music. “But I don’t think whatever’s calling me means me harm. I really don’t.”

“The dark side can be very subtle and very tricky, Rey!”

“And since when do _you_ try to keep me from accessing it?”

“Since when are _you_ so keen to delve right into it?”

“This planet doesn’t even feel dark to me!”

“Are you kidding me? It’s so dark I feel like I’m trying to see through a shade visor! It’s putting new curl in my hair!”

“This is kriffing ridiculous,” Rey huffed, making for the exit. “You’re paranoid, and sleep-deprived, and we’re definitely going to need at _least _a new plasteel housing for that hyperdrive motivator, because that one is so badly scored I can see there’s a touch. We’re lucky we made it here in one piece. So unless you’ve got one lying around? Or, say, an entire wheel of class 4 insulating tape?” He shook his head. “I thought not. I think we can run a ship this size with the tape until we get to a planet with actual commerce and acquire a proper housing, which shouldn’t be hard to get, it appears standard, but we _aren’t_ going to get back into long-haul hyperspace without it. So we had better hope I can find someone with something to sell, or at the very least a crashed ship I can salvage something from.” Rey pulled on her boots. “Are you coming with me or not?”

He hesitated. “I really do think we should stick together, but - ”

“But you’re dead certain this planet won’t welcome you.” 

“Exactly.”

“I think you should trust your instincts,” Rey said, not sure why she was so confident that venturing alone onto the apparently dead planet of Dathomir was just the thing she needed. She lowered the ramp. “I’ve got my two-way. Keep an eye on my location, comm if anything looks fishy.”

“Rey, you don’t even know if the atmosphere’s breathable!”

Rey drew in a huge breath, held it, and let it out. “It’s _fine_, auntie!”

She heard him mutter “she’s insane” as the ramp rose back into the ship. 

#

Rey had to admit, Dathomir didn’t  _look_ particularly promising. 

“What _happened_ here?” Rey mused aloud as she ventured forth onto the planet’s surface. She remembered Yoda had mentioned their journey might take them to dead planets, but she had never really thought about what that might feel like. But what it felt like was Dathomir. In front of her was a sort of petrified forest, littered with bones. A thin green mist hovered over the ground. Rey understood intellectually that this was a scary and creepy scene. But all she could feel was the deep bereavement that hung over the landscape. This had been a community. And whatever had killed them had been a deep trauma for them and their land.

There was a ruin ahead of her and she walked towards it. She was aware of being manipulated by the Force, but was having a hard time squaring how much of her willingness to venture forth was a compulsion arising from outside her mind, and how much was simple curiosity. The ruin looked interesting, objectively. It clearly had a storied history, judging from its current scars. 

Rey slowed as she approached it. She knew it was a place that was holy to someone, or had been. Her instinct was to place her hand on her heart and bow her head, as had been the custom when entering a sacred place on Jakku, and she hoped that whatever power  resided here would understand her foreign expression of respect.

Rey was not surprised to see a Force ghost rise to greet her as she entered the ruin. She was surprised that it was tinged the same green as the mist she’d seen outside.

“Hello there,” Rey ventured.

“Hello yourself,” the ghost replied.

“What is this place? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It is the ancestral home of my people, the Nightsisters. Now I am alone, and the only one. And I’m not, really.” The ghost gestured down at her tall, slender ghost of a body, her white-blonde hair flopping into her eyes. “As you see.”

Rey wasn’t sure how to respond to that with the proper sensitivity, so said nothing, but gave a brief nod.

“And you. A Jedi. What brings a Jedi to Dathomir?”

“Primarily, hyperdrive trouble,” Rey admitted. “We took an unlucky shot leaving the last planet we were on. But the second we landed here I started feeling, well, a _need_ to get out and look around.”

“Yes. I felt you land. I wanted to speak with you.”

“But not my companion?”

“Your _Sith_ companion,” the ghost hissed. “Or close enough to it. You’d be well rid of him.”

“People keep telling me that.”

“You should listen.”

They stood in silence, sizing one another up. 

Rey cleared her throat. “Well, we have a quest to complete, and then I will.” _Probably_, Rey completed mentally. “Anyway. I’m Rey.”

“Asajj,” replied the ghost.

“I notice you aren’t a - a conventional Force ghost, if there is such a thing. Your feeling in the Force is entirely different, from both the dark side and the light.” Rey thought it might be rude to mention the color.

“You are strong in the Force to notice so easily,” Asajj said with a crooked smile. “Yes. I never learned to create a Force ghost from any of my assorted masters. This is Nightsister magick. It derives its power from the Force, but it’s quite different.”

“Who were your masters?”

“That’s a very personal question, and one I’m not going to answer.”

“Sorry,” Rey hurried. “I didn’t - I don’t mean to offend.”

“Were you formally trained as a Jedi?”

“Not - well - it depends what you mean by ‘formally.’ And ‘trained.’ And also probably ‘Jedi.’”

Asajj huffed a laugh under her breath. “I see. Let me be more specific. Were you trained at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, or in some other organized Jedi school?”

“No. Those schools are destroyed.”

Asajj’s eyes flew open in shock. “What!”

“Long ago, I think,” Rey said. “Before I was born.”

“How the galaxy has changed,” Asajj mused quietly. “The Jedi, no longer a going concern. Who’d have believed it possible. So you were informally tutored by a Jedi, outside the temple?”

“Right.”

“Same,” Asajj said, with a friendlier smile. “For a time. So are the Sith in power, now?”

“Not exactly.” Rey reached for the words to explain the current galactic power situation. “It’s more or less a military dictatorship. Its rise to power was masterminded by a dark Force user, but not one who followed all the ways of the Sith, as I understand it. He’s since been killed, and his erstwhile apprentice is - more of an enforcer, I’d say, than a leader. He has an important-sounding title but no real authority. As far as I know the main holders of influence at the center of the First Order government aren’t sensitive to the Force at all.” 

“How interesting. I suppose there was a mass extermination of Jedi at some point. I remember feeling it in the Force. That has to have been decades ago, though.” 

“As I understand it, yes.”

Asajj pondered, then seemed to come to some resolution in her mind. “You mentioned a quest.” Rey nodded. “What sort of quest?”

Rey supposed she ought to have anticipated this question and come up with a snappy answer  by now , but she hadn’t. “Well, at this point it’s become more of a set of quests, I suppose. I keep getting, ah, well.” She could feel herself blushing, trying to lay out this very private situation to a stranger. “Have you ever heard of someone being impregnated by the Force, by any chance?”

Asajj grimaced. “No. But I don’t doubt it’s possible. Don’t tell me - ”

“Yes,” Rey completed grimly. “Repeatedly. So part of my ‘quest’ is to procure the means to terminate any more that might arise. And the rest of it is to figure out how to stop it happening.”

“Despicable,” Asajj hissed. “Absolutely - unfathomable. I’m sorry, Rey.” Rey could see that Asajj’s eyes had filled with tears. 

“Hey, thanks for the sympathy, at least,” Rey said, wanting to make the ghost feel better. It occurred to Rey that almost everyone she told felt worse about this situation than she did. 

Asajj’s face lit up suddenly. “Ah, but I can give you more than that.”

Just then, Rey’s two-way comm chirped. “I’d better take this,” she said apologetically. “He gets a bit twitchy when I’m out by myself, and he’s known to do ill-advised things when he’s twitchy.” She saw Asajj roll her eyes. 

“What is it?” she answered.

“You okay? This planet is giving me the creeps.”

“I’m fine. Exploring local ruins. Talk to you later.”

“Be careful,” said Kylo’s voice as Rey cut the connection. 

“This is your Sith?” Asajj said, clearly amused. “He seems a bit…sensitive.”

“He _isn’t_ a Sith,” Rey explained. “At least, I don’t think so. He’s more complicated than that.” 

“Oh, child,” Asajj sighed. “I wish I could tell you that you could trust your instincts about him.” Rey winced. Just slightly, but Asajj caught it. “Not the first time somebody’s told you that?”

“_I’ve_ told me that,” Rey clarified. “I know I shouldn’t trust him. But he’s as dedicated to solving this as I am. It’s his child too, we’re pretty sure.”

“I _see_,” Asajj replied, her voice thoughtful. “Very interesting. But as I was about to say when your little friend so rudely interrupted - I think I can help.”

“Oh really?”

“Nightsister magick isn’t the Force like you’re used to wielding the Force. It evolved entirely separately, here on Dathomir. And as you might imagine, a culture of women using the Force to enhance their power focused on concerns that mattered to _us_. To our _sisters_,” she said significantly, a nudge to Rey to think more deeply about the implication.

Rey’s eyes grew wide as saucers. “You can manipulate your fertility with the Force.”

Asajj nodded. 

“Is it possible to learn this power?”

“Not from a Jedi,” Asajj smirked. “But if you’re willing to stray a bit from the straight and narrow, I think we might be able to figure something out.”

“I’ve never been on the straight and narrow to begin with, Asajj. I’ve never even _seen_ it.”

“Correct answer,” the ghost replied. “Meditate with me.”

Their whole conversation had taken place in the entry area of the ruined temple, or whatever this building had been. Asajj turned and beckoned Rey to follow her. As they ventured further in, Rey realized what a massive complex it was. “Did you live here with your sisters?” Rey asked.

“Not for as long as I should have.” Her voice was bitter. But more than that, it was sad. 

“You miss them desperately.”

“Beyond your wildest imagining. They should be with me here, but even their spirits have been cut off from the Force. My mother, my ancestors - nothing remains.” 

“I’m sorry.” They emerged into a grand room where a dais stood. There had clearly been more structure here that had been destroyed in a devastating battle. “And I’m sorry that you have to be reminded of all you’ve lost, living here. I lost my family too, and I didn’t realize how much it weighed on me to be reminded of them until I left my homeworld.”

“It is my place,” Asajj said simply. “I belong to Dathomir, to this sacred hall. And someday maybe my sisters will find their way home. Come, sit. Follow my lead.”

Rey had meditated a few times with Luke and understood what Asajj was asking her to do. Sharing meditation was a Jedi pedagogical technique. But it felt very different with Asajj leading. As she sat, Rey could feel the eerie green mist gathering around her, attracted to her power. The meditation wasn’t peaceful or balanced like it was with the Jedi. But it didn’t feel inherently  _bad_ , like it had felt to be in Snoke’s presence. It was more like being on Dagobah, really - a wild Force current that ran through Rey’s body and took her breath away. But underneath it were different undertones - of love, of loyalty, of the will to subversive power. There was a sentience there, a feeling of pride and defiance.

Suddenly it was over. “Yes,” said Asajj. “If you’re willing, I think my ancestors’ power that still resides in these halls will allow you to learn the ritual to manipulate your fertility, although you are not one of us. It will not prevent you. But it will require a sacrifice.”

“What sort of sacrifice?”

“The power wants the child in your womb now.”

Rey was thunderstruck. “What, it’s after my firstborn? No deal. I’m not giving birth to this baby. That’s the whole idea.” The nerve!

“No, no, you misunderstand. I will teach you to terminate it, and to prevent it happening again. But I need to take this one, as it is now.”

“It’s just a tiny clump of cells now. What use is it to you?”

“I can already feel the midi-chlorians developing in it, even at this early stage. My ancestral power permits me to attempt a number of profound magicks with them. The ritual to remove it should be painless to you, and as you don’t want it anyway…”

Rey wasn’t sure why this bothered her, but it did. “What sort of profound magicks?”

Asajj hesitated, clearly trying to decide how much to say. “I… _may_ be able to revive some of my sisters. To some extent.”

“You aren’t certain?”

“I haven’t seen it done before.” She paused again. “But I think it should be possible. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” 

Rey felt she should probe more about the potential consequences of the operation being proposed. But she also wasn’t sure she trusted Asajj to tell her the whole truth. Instead, Rey opened herself completely to the Force, just for a moment, seeking general guidance. She usually kept the full extent of her Force sensitivity well shielded, and it took her breath for a moment to unfurl her awareness like a pair of broad wings and take the planet in.

“The Nightsisters worked with the Sith,” was all she said aloud in reaction to what she learned.

“And were betrayed,” Asajj answered, clearly not surprised at Rey’s new insight. “Why else would I have known to warn you about your companion?”

“Repeatedly, though. And you - you were a Sith apprentice.”

“Never an apprentice,” Asajj corrected her, shaking her head. “An assassin. And I realized the error of my ways. Eventually.”

“You were betrayed, personally. Not just the Nightsisters, but you.” 

“Personally. Yes. It’s ancient history to me now. But, in short, I am no Sith. I am no Jedi either, but if I had to choose - ”

“I’m not asking you to choose. I’m just trying to understand who’s asking for this embryo and what I might come to regret.”

“Your caution is understandable.” She heaved a sigh. “I regret ever becoming involved with the Sith. I had my differences with the Jedi. But the Sith destroyed my life. I give you my most profound oath that I will never do anything again to enable the Sith or anyone like them to come back into power. And as I’ve said, while some might characterize the Nightsister magicks as more dark-aligned than light-aligned, what sets us apart is how little we have invested in those labels. The Force simply isn’t experienced that way on Dathomir.” 

“I understand that,” Rey said, not sure she understood at all. “Or rather, I sense that. The way you use the Force is fundamentally different from the other traditions of Force users I’ve encountered. But you have to understand, I’m not staying on Dathomir. And if you manage to bring your sisters back, and that has some repercussion for the rest of the galaxy…”

“I don’t intend for anything I’m doing to extend past the planet of Dathomir. And in the event that it does, Rey, you and yours will have gained a powerful ally. I won’t forget this. _We_ won’t, if there is ever a _we_ again.” Asajj paused. “And consider, too, that in learning the magick I have offered to teach you, in a way you become one of us. Maybe not a Nightsister, entirely, but someone with an affinity to us. A part of the - extended family, if you will.”

“A Nightcousin,” Rey laughed. 

“A Nightniece, maybe,” Asajj returned, cackling. “You’re still a child.” Then her voice grew serious. “You said you lost your family. And I sense your yearning to belong to one again. It makes you less critical of your companions than you should be. I understand, all too well.”

Rey could feel the words tugging at her, and resisted. This offer of family wasn’t real, any more than any other. But the fact remained that Asajj knew something that Rey very much wanted to know, and Rey, more than many, understood what it was to be alone. “You teach me first. You can have the embryo, and I will trust you to do the right thing with it, but you have to show me the ritual first.”

“Of course,” Asajj purred. 

#

Rey commed Kylo before they began the ritual and told him she was planning to explore an underground complex of caves and might not be finished for a few hours. 

“Don’t do that,” Kylo said. 

“Come and stop me, then,” Rey replied, embarrassed to have him act so weird and clingy with Asajj listening in, and cut the connection, knowing he wouldn’t, and that he couldn’t fix the hyperdrive without her. It felt a little low, lying to him this way. But it wasn’t worth arguing with him about this - this thing that he couldn’t possibly understand, for so many reasons.

“You are an unusual Jedi,” Asajj observed as she led the way down a ramp into a deeper section of the massive complex. 

“All Jedi are unusual, nowadays,” Rey replied. “As I’m the only one.” 

“You are _not_,” Asajj replied, shocked. 

“I hadn’t mentioned that?” Rey said, genuinely not sure whether she had.

“No! I had no idea the campaign to exterminate the Jedi had been so - thorough. What about your master? You said you were trained by a Jedi, right?”

“Dead,” Rey replied. “And his training wasn’t traditional, either. He was instructed by Jedi who survived the purges, but he was already an adult, and they were very old, and had very limited time with him. He tried to start a Jedi academy of his own, but it proved more than he could handle, and didn’t last long. As far as I know none of those students are alive now.” Well, there was the one. “If they are, they aren’t claiming the title of Jedi.” 

“I’m sorry,” Asajj said. 

“I’m sure you could tell me a lot of stories about them. It would be educational to hear from someone with a more, er, nuanced view.”

“Compared to whom?”

“I’ve run across more than my share of Force ghosts in the last few weeks.” 

“I see.” Asajj rounded a corner into a room filled with glowing pools in different shades of blue. “Perhaps when your quest is complete you can return without the Sith.” 

“Perhaps. And he isn’t a Sith.” 

Asajj appeared to be deep in thought for a moment, or trying to remember something. “You’ll need to bathe nude in this pool,” she said finally, pointing to one of them. “And then in that chest there, you should find a ritual dress. Get out of the pool and put it directly on - don’t try to dry off first.”

“Should I leave my things someplace?” Rey looked around. The room was so sparsely decorated and furnished, it felt wrong to just throw her boots and rucksack in a corner.

“Good point. There are shelves out there, around the side from where we came in.”

Rey ducked around the corner and made quick work of removing her boots and clothes, and stored them neatly on the shelf. She tried not to be self-conscious as she reentered the room, but it was unusual for anyone to see her nude, ghost or no. Asajj did not politely avert her gaze.

“This could be a bit tricky. Usually, one of your sisters should pour the oil. But under the circumstances, there is nobody here to stand for you, and I can’t take a corporeal form. I’ll tell you which oils to use and guide your hand, but you will need to get them and pour them yourself, along with your ritual dress.”

“Will that interfere with the magick?”

“Doubt it,” Asajj said with a shrug. “Follow instructions and you should be okay.” 

“Reassuring.”

Asajj led Rey to gather a half-dozen phials and a musty-smelling but clean gray robe made of a light, rough fabric. By the pool there was a little apparatus that was designed to hold six phials. “Leave the robe right here, and put the phials here in order,” she said. “Red, light blue, dark blue, clear, cloudy, black.” Rey set them in their places nervously. “Now we pour. You will need to trace glyphs, so I’ll lead your hand. Here, let me show you.” She touched her ghostly hand to Rey’s flesh. Rey felt an eerie, damp chill. “Do you feel anything?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You will need to close your eyes. You _must_ follow the exact motions of my hand with yours. I’ll go slowly, but you’ll need to follow my guidance both in how much oil you pour and in the glyph you trace on the pool.”

“Will you be able to tell if I get it wrong?”

“Yes. But you can’t try again until after the next new third moon, so you don’t want to mess it up.” 

“Can we practice?”

“Very well. I think it’ll be easiest if we stand on the same spot. Then it’ll be natural for me to draw the runes. And maybe we will resonate better in the Force.”

Rey took a deep breath, not excited to experience the chill of sharing her space with a ghost. She was already cold as it was, nude in this cave. 

“You’re _warm_,” Asajj said breathlessly as she stepped forward to occupy the same spot as Rey. “I’d _forgotten_ warmth.” She sounded surprised, as if she hadn’t expected the sensation and needed a moment to compose herself. Rey kept her focus on trying not to shiver. “I’m cold, aren’t I? I can feel your body shaking.”

“Yes. But I’m also a little nervous.”

“You should be,” Asajj said matter-of-factly. “If you get this wrong the consequences could be very nasty.”

“Can we just get started,” Rey grumbled, her teeth trying to chatter. 

“All right. Close your eyes. Stretch out your hand as I do. Move with me.” Rey wasn’t sure at first how to follow that order. But then she felt Asajj’s arm move, and she moved to match it. “Good. Can you mimic my hand?”

“Let’s see. Are your eyes open?”

“Yes, I’m watching. I’m going to do some practice tracing and pouring. Make sure to match the motions and angles exactly as I perform them.” 

Rey could feel the motions in the Force before they happened, and only used the chill of Asajj’s ghostly form to confirm her intuitions. She pantomimed the swirls and slashes as Asajj made them, and moved her hand to match Asajj’s gestures and shapes. “This isn’t so bad. Am I doing all right?”

“Better than all right,” Asajj replied, approval in her tone. “I can say the incantations - I just can’t pick up the oils. If you can keep this up I think we can start now.”

“Should I put on the robe?”

“No, not until you’re done bathing.”

Rey suppressed a sigh. She was freezing. She kept her eyes closed. “Well, let’s do this, then.”

She felt Asajj smile. “Let’s.”


	11. Chapter 11

The first vial, they went slowly. Rey couldn’t tell what color it was. She’d worried that it would be hard to know how fast the oil was pouring and whether she was holding the vial at the correct angle, but the information she needed seemed to come to her. After the second vial she felt herself dropping into a light trance, which made attending to the Force much easier. She heard Asajj’s low voice murmuring words in a language she couldn’t have named if she’d wanted to. 

Suddenly, after an indeterminate amount of time in the Force trance, the air in the room shifted. Rey could only describe it as “heavy with power.” 

“Open your eyes,” Asajj said. “Enter the pool.” She continued her chant.

Rey dipped a foot in, uncertain how deep it was. To her surprise and delight, the water was pleasantly warm. Rey couldn’t feel the bottom, so she held onto the side.

“Let go,” Asajj hissed. “Let yourself sink.”

Rey did as she was told. The second she let go of the edge, she felt herself sink like a stone, as if she were falling through air instead of water. She gasped in surprise, breathing in the liquid of the pool, but instead of coughing or sputtering she found breathing it wasn’t a problem at all. She sank further and further into the weird liquid, and the light of the chamber above faded, to be replaced by an eerie green glow that reminded her of Asajj’s green-tinged Force ghost. Rey couldn’t tell if she was still sinking or not.

A hazy, indistinct woman’s shape materialized before Rey. “Who are you, who would learn the magicks of the Nightsisters?”

“Rey of Jakku,” Rey replied respectfully, squinting at the shade to try to see whether it had a face.

“What do you wish to be taught?”

“I was told I could learn to use the Force to control my womb.” 

“Ye-e-es. But you know the price of such knowledge?”

“I was told you want the embryo growing inside me.” 

“Is it a boon you are willing to grant?”

Rey wavered. “You won’t do anything…horrible with it?”

The shade cackled. “Your idea of ‘horrible’ may be very different from ours.”

It was a struggle to reconcile the feeling of responsibility Rey had for the spark growing inside her with the certain knowledge that it was a responsibility that had been imposed upon her entirely without her consent and against her will. 

“We feel your indecision. You do not trust us. You are wise not to.” 

“What do you mean?”

“You know nothing of our culture or ways. We are strange to you. Of course, regardless of how you came to this juncture, you would be a rare woman indeed to have no questions or concerns.” 

“Right, yes.” 

“But what can we tell you to reassure you? There is nothing. Any words we said would offer you no reassurance. They could be engraved in the thickest ceramics, or empty as frogsong. You _must_ trust, or you must go.”

Rey hesitated. “May I reach out to the Force?”

“It will not guide you here. You may try. But this space is sacred in ways you do not have experience with. You will not hear it here. Here, you are an individual, making choices with your mind and your heart alone.”

Rey tried, but the shade was right. She wasn’t cut off from the Force, but it was warped around the ritual pool like light bent in glass. The feeling of rightness she’d hoped to feel was absent, but so too was any feeling of foreboding. Rey realized with no little surprise that she wasn’t used to having to trust her own judgment; she’d become so accustomed to looking to the Force for answers. 

But suddenly she felt silly. If she’d had any doubts about what her answer would be, she would have balked at letting go of the edge of the pool. But she hadn’t. For whatever reason, she trusted Asajj, and Asajj’s people.

“I grant the boon. The Nightsisters may have the life growing inside me.”

“Thank you,” the shade replied, kneeling before her. “You have given us a profound gift, and we hope to give you something of equal value in return.”

The shade reached out, one indistinct hand at each of Rey’s hips, and then snapped its hands together, converging inside Rey’s pelvis. Rey felt a chill shoot through her like electric current, and then a feeling like something was reaching into her lower abdomen and squeezing, hard, just once. And then the shade withdrew. 

“It is done,” it said. “Rey of Jakku, we owe you a debt. Ascend to the surface and your sister Asajj Ventress will teach you what you wish to learn. May your trajectory return you to Dathomir.”

“Thank you, auntie,” Rey said, following her instincts, and bowed at the waist. She couldn’t see the shade’s face as it faded, but she could feel its smile, and there was no malice in it.

She felt her body begin to rise, at first slowly, then faster, like a ship taking off. And then her head burst through the surface of the pool, and Asajj was there. And so was Kylo Ren. They were arguing. He’d drawn his lightsaber and was brandishing it threateningly.

#

“Oh, good, there she is now,” Asajj said. “Your Sith got scared without you.” The scorn dripping from her voice would have been satisfying under other circumstances. As it stood, Rey was nude in a pool in a chilly room, and she very much wanted Kylo Ren to be elsewhere.

“What the _kriff_ is going on here?” Kylo burst out. “This - whatever it is,” he gestured at Asajj with his saber, “wouldn’t tell me where you were. You’ve been gone for hours. And now you come busting out of this weird, dark, creepy - and you’re _naked_ \- what the _kriff_, Rey?”

“Calm down, and put that thing away,” Rey said, stalling for time. “You’ve interrupted us. And turn around, I don’t want you to see me in my altogether. I _will_ explain,” she said, as he opened his mouth indignantly to argue, “but not right this minute. Turn _around_, you nerfherder. Asajj, what comes next?” He turned around reluctantly, extinguishing his weapon, clearly so utterly baffled by the circumstances that he didn’t have the wherewithal to contradict.

“The ritual is complete, and now you should be able to access the chamber of mysteries without tripping any of its protections.”

“Mysteries? Protections?? _Ritual_?!?” Kylo reacted, his voice rising from a growl to a yelp.

Asajj ignored him. “The garment is waiting. Put it on and follow me.”

“What about him?” 

“He’ll regret it if he tries.” She said this in his direction, biting out each word.

Rey pulled herself up out of the pool and put on the rough robe, dripping all over the stone floor. “Stay there, Kylo,” she said forcefully, hoping he was still cowed enough by the strange situation to be willing to mind her if she made her voice sound enough like his mother’s, feeling guilty that he’d been worried enough for her to leave the ship, again. “I’ll be back soon.” 

Asajj led the way out of the other side of the large open space where the ritual pools were located. “He’s going to try to follow,” she murmured, quietly enough that Rey could barely hear. “He’s going to make trouble.”

“I’m not sure what to do,” Rey whispered back. “You see how - unstable he can be.” 

“_Why_ are you traveling with him?” They kept their voices low.

“Tale not worth telling. How long will it take to learn what I need to learn?”

“We have holocrons. You may have the relevant one, and take it with you, if you promise to bring it back.”

“Of course.” Rey was humbled by the gesture. Apparently they really meant it - she was family, now.

“So, then, no time at all. But if he tries to follow us, I wasn’t bluffing about those protections. You could both be trapped down here.” 

“Brilliant,” Rey grumbled. “Well, let’s hope he doesn’t.” She turned her head to call back to him from the entrance to the passageway, “She wasn’t bluffing about those protections! Don’t move from that spot, or you’ll get us both killed, or worse.”

He didn’t respond, but he hadn’t moved. Rey saw the muscles in his back tense, and figured that was the best she could hope for under the circumstances. “Let’s make this quick,” she said to Asajj, knowing it was gratuitous.

“I want that idiot off my planet. We’ll go as fast as your legs can carry you.” 

The passageway to the chamber of mysteries was long and winding, and sloped down further and further into the planet’s crust. Soon, the only light was Asajj’s eerie glow. 

“The shade in the pool called you my sister,” Rey said.

“You granted us a boon, and opened a possibility we thought foreclosed,” Asajj replied. “You are welcome in all the places Nightsisters are welcome, and in that, we are sisters.” 

Just when Rey thought the descent would never end, they came to a small, rectangular stone door. “Put your hands there,” Asajj said, pointing to a circle inscribed in the stone.

Rey did as she was told and felt power wash over her, like a wave breaking on the beach. She gasped, but kept her hands where they were. The door split in two and receded into the wall. The room beyond was dark. She looked at Asajj.

“Only one person may enter the chamber at a time, living or dead,” Asajj said gently. “Step through. It will give you what you need.” 

Rey stepped in and heard the doors scrape shut. She stood in the dark, feeling her heart beat wildly, remembering Asajj’s warning about the protections on the chamber burying her and Kylo underground. But if she hadn’t been allowed to enter, the doors wouldn’t have opened at all, she told herself. She wasn’t convinced. 

Just as she was starting to think about turning around and pounding on the stone doors, she saw a dim red light flicker on. It was coming from a triangular device Rey could just barely see in the gloom. She stepped toward it, tentatively at first, then more boldly. When it was right in front of her, she snatched it, and heard the doors scrape open behind her. The device in her hand, she ran back to the suddenly very comforting glow of Asajj Ventress. 

“That must be the one,” Asajj said. “Let’s get out of here before your boyfriend gets fidgety.”

“He _isn’t_ my boyfriend,” Rey mumbled.

“Whatever they’re calling them these days,” Asajj said with a wave of her hand, her tone amused. “Hurry up.” She was setting a much faster pace uphill, and Rey found herself quickly out of breath. She was dreading the scene that would ensue when they rejoined Kylo. 

They emerged into the room where the ritual pools were, and he wasn’t there. He’d smashed a bunch of the vials that lined the walls and scored some of the walls with his lightsaber.

“Oh, very impressive,” Asajj said, annoyance in every syllable. “Wanton destruction. I ask you again,” she said, not bothering to elaborate on the question.

“And again, _not worth telling_,” Rey hissed through gritted teeth, tired of Asajj mocking Kylo Ren when Rey had apparently come to feel it was her sole prerogative to do so. “I’ve got to find him.”

“Luckily, or unluckily, I suspect you’ll be able to follow the trail of senseless damage.” The condescension in her tone was sharp as kyber crystal. “Looks like thataway.” She pointed a graceful finger down the passageway leading back out to the planet’s surface.

Rey felt herself blush. “I know. He’s like a child when he’s angry. Supposedly anger helps him wield the power of the dark side?”

Asajj threw back her head and cackled. “Whoever taught him was deliberately holding him back,” she said, with the joy of a sudden realization. “That impotent, impulsive hack-and-slash - I’ve seen it before. He thought he was an apprentice? He wasn’t. He was a tool.” She paused. “His master - dead, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did he - ”

“Yes.” Yes, Kylo had killed Snoke. “Saving my life.”

“_Interesting_.” Asajj looked as if she wanted to say more. “I need to meditate on this, and many other things. And you need to find your non-Sith before he gets into any trouble.” It had the sound of a goodbye.

“I know,” Rey said, taking the opportunity to change back into her clothes and pop the holocron into her rucksack. “I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon, sad to say. But good luck with your new midi-chlorian project - and, while I’ve got you, is there anyplace nearby I might find spare parts to repair a reasonably standard hyperdrive?” 

“Well, hard to say. There’s a veritable ship graveyard a few klicks from here toward the equator, but they’re all Clone Wars vintage. I don’t know if you’ll find anything you can use.”

“I’ll take a look around, anyway. Thank you so much, Asajj. You’ve been - a true sister to me.”

“I’ll see you soon, Rey of Jakku.” Her tone brooked no argument. “I’d better. I want that holocron back.”

“You have my word as a Jedi,” Rey said, affecting a bow.

“That’s worth less than nothing to me. I’ll take your word as a Nightsister,” Asajj said sternly, but her face bore a smile. 

“My word as a Nightsister, then.” 

#

When Rey located Kylo, he had been incapacitated by what appeared to be some sort of magical booby trap. He was swinging his lightsaber at the empty air, clearly under the impression he was under attack and in mortal danger. Rey shouted and swore at him, but he couldn’t seem to see or hear her. He was drenched in sweat, pale, and already very tired. Rey couldn’t tell how long he’d been at this, but clearly it had been a while.

Finally, at a loss for any other course of action, she flicked her own lightsaber on and began blocking his attacks. It was easy, in a way, because he was tired and afraid - but hard, too, because she couldn’t see what he was seeing, making his moves hard to predict.

After a minute or two, she saw a wrinkle of confusion appear between his eyebrows. Clearly, the booby trap wasn’t sophisticated enough to incorporate her contributions to the scene, and Kylo had become aware that he had an additional, invisible opponent. He kept fighting, but he seemed to be slowing, unsure of what was going on and reaching out to the Force. Rey suspected that he wouldn’t be able to, any more than she had been in the ritual pool, but hopefully  _noticing_ that would help snap him out of the trance he was in.

Rey hopefully continued to block and parry, but apparently the hallucination regained its hold. He gritted his teeth and returned to his more usual fighting form. Frustrated, Rey shouted, “Wake _up_!” and touched his shoulder with her saber, just enough to leave a mark. 

He froze, his eyes wide, then slumped against the wall in a faint. 

“Magnificent,” Rey grumbled to herself. She picked up his saber and flicked it off. “Am I going to keep having to drag this gigantic, unconscious body out of situations? Is that my lot in life? Budge up,” she said fondly to her limp travel companion, trying to maneuver him into a position where she could either wake him or lift him with the Force. 

“Muh,” he murmured. “Bats.” He did not wake up.

“Bats,” Rey repeated. “Lovely. Well, nothing for it, then.” She lifted him with the Force, thankful not to have to carry him on her back, and transported him up to the surface of Dathomir. “Don’t suppose you came on the - oh, good. The speeder.” She dumped his bulk unceremoniously onto the back of the speeder and zipped back to the starship. 

Kylo woke up on the way. It wasn’t a long ride, but the noise and motion seemed to revive him, along with the fresh air. “The bats. How did I get away from the bats?”

“They were a trick, Kylo, there weren’t any bats.” 

“Nonsense. They were huge.” 

“You were hallucinating.”

“Huge, with big sharp teeth. I swear to you, Rey. Purple eyes. They said they’d bitten you and you’d joined them in their, ah, their carnivorous league.” 

“They didn’t exist. You were fighting thin air when I found you. Carnivorous league, you say?” Rey felt an unaccountable feeling of tenderness for this absurd man overwhelm her for a moment. 

“Something like that.” He still wasn’t fully awake. “What was that place?”

“This is a strange planet, Kylo. You should have stayed with the ship. Don’t worry about it.” She paused. “Actually, now that you’re awake, I got a tip on some old ships I might be able to salvage. Do you mind making a stop, or do you want to get back to the _Needle_?”

“Don’t leave me alone on this rock again. The bats are going to get to me next time,” he said hazily, drifting off. Rey wasn’t sure if he had gone to sleep or fainted again. She absentmindedly reached back to run a hand through his hair as she turned the speeder toward the equator.

A few minutes later she saw the ship graveyard Asajj had mentioned. There were at least a dozen ships, all antiques in various states of decay, but they looked to have been top of the line for their time, and none of them appeared to have been looted by scavengers. At least, not  _competent_ scavengers, she thought, eyeing the copper coils festooning the outside of a troop transport. It occurred to Rey that now that she no longer had to procure an abortion with any urgency, she could give these vessels the attention they sorely needed and feed herself for half a standard year on the proceeds.

“Kylo! Wake up,” she said, none too gently, as she braked the speeder. “I’ve got to take a look around these ships. Stay put or come with me.”

“I’m up, I’m up,” he groaned. 

“These ships are in excellent condition, but I don’t know what their hyperdrives look like. Want to learn to salvage?”

“No.” 

“Want to stay here with the speeder?”

“No,” he said, clearly stifling a whimper.

“Come along, then,” she said, pulling him upright. “While we’ve got the light, let’s see what we can see.”

The ships were old, and most of them did not have hyperdrives at all. Rey realized with annoyance and dismay that they must have used hyperspace rings. But hadn’t there been some starfighter near the end of the Clone Wars that had an onboard hyperdrive? She searched her memory, then snapped her fingers. “Kylo, is that over there an ARC-170?”

His eyes followed her pointing finger. “How the kriff should I know?” 

“I think it is. I’ve read about these.” She started trudging over to the ship in question, which was off to the side, far from the others.

“What if it is?”

“These are Clone Wars era, and most of them don’t have onboard hyperdrives. But that was the big innovation in the ARC-170, right? Didn’t you ever read up on this history? I can’t believe I know this and you don’t.” She reached the ship and reached underneath. “Here, make yourself useful and help me get this thing on its side.” 

“The history I learned was more around, I don’t know, politics and movements and great figures. Not who was flying which ships.”

“Doesn’t sound like very useful history, then,” she said matter-of-factly. “Aha! I thought so. Look at that. Mint condition, too,” she crowed. “I’m sure these contacts are corroded but it’s nothing a little abrading flimsi won’t fix. It’s not an exact match for yours, of course, but if I just pull the circuitry with it…and recalibrate your nav system…and I guess I’d better grab the fuel injector too…” She trailed off, deep in concentration, pulled out her rucksack, opened up a small box of tools, and got to work opening up the starfighter and stripping it of many of its critical systems. She spoke to herself as she worked, exclaiming over its excellent condition, the clever design choices that made it work, its exceptional utility as a fighter ship. “What a weapons array on this little champion,” Rey cooed, twisting at a photon torpedo launcher with a multi-tool until it came loose. “This could come in useful. And look at where they put the heat sinks. Ingenious! These Clone Wars shipbuilders knew their craft. Hold this spanner,” she added, waving it at Kylo.

“Very interesting,” he replied absently, taking it. “So you think you can get the _Needle_ flying again?” 

“Oh, sure,” she said, not fully engaged in the exchange. “Won’t be half as fast but we’ll get her into hyperspace and get you someplace where you can get her fixed up properly.” She stuffed a few components into her rucksack. “Think you can use that laser cannon for anything? Seems a shame to leave it.”

“Rey, I _really_ want to get back to the ship,” Kylo said. Something in his tone caught Rey’s attention. She looked up at him, actually noticing his condition for the first time since they’d found the ship graveyard.

Kylo Ren was still white as a sheet, and a fine layer of sweat covered all his visible skin. She stood up and felt his forehead. She couldn’t tell if he was feverish or just clammy. “Right,” she said. “Sorry, old habits. Let’s get you back to the ship. Can you sit up? I want to put this hyperdrive module on the back.” 

“Yes,” he said shortly. “But I am not…up to this adventure at the moment.” 

“Roger that,” she said, hoisting her hardware onto the speeder. “I’ll pilot. You just relax.”

With a wistful look back at the pristine ships, Rey fired up the speeder. “I’ll be back for you someday,” she mouthed at the ship graveyard as they sped off. 


	12. Chapter 12

When they returned to the _Needle_, Rey took Kylo to the medbay first to get a sense of what was ailing him. His temperature was slightly elevated, but otherwise, nothing appeared to be wrong. “I just don’t feel  _right_ here,” he kept saying.

“Just sleep,” Rey said. “I’ll handle the hyperdrive and the landing gear.”

“Scared to sleep,” he mumbled, his voice fading as his eyelids drooped shut. “Bats.”

She sighed, caught between many different feelings. She was itching to figure out how to use the Nightsister holocron, but she knew she should fix the ship first. She went to room 3 for the arc welder and shade visor and got cracking on the landing gear.

Once it was fixed up nicely, Rey hesitated. It really would be useful to have a second pair of hands to help out with the hyperdrive. She went to check on Kylo. He was asleep, but stirring. “Kylo?” Rey whispered. He didn’t respond. She tried again, louder. 

“He’s out cold,” she said to herself. “I’ve got a few minutes.” 

Rey retreated to her room with her rucksack and engaged the door lock, then rummaged under all the wiring and parts she’d liberated from the ARC-170 and finally located the holocron. “Okay, fancy,” she said to it. “What can you do?”

She set it on the floor and sat down cross-legged in front of it. She looked at it quizzically. It didn’t react. She poked it, picked it up, pressed her fingers against its surface. “Holocron, dear,” she said to it gently. “Open up.” No reply.

She returned it to its place on the floor, closed her eyes, and reached out to the Force, letting her hands hover over it. “Come _on_,” she whispered. 

She tried to lift it with the Force and it stubbornly remained on the floor. “Seriously?” she fumed. “If I went through that whole ritual for some inert antique rubbish -” She whacked the rubbish with her hand. She swore she saw a faint glow come from the side of it, just for a moment. 

“Rubbish,” she said tentatively, hitting it again. Could that possibly be the password? No, that wasn’t getting a reaction.

“But this is a _Nightsister_ holocron,” she said to herself. “Probably I have to access it in a Nightsister way.” Maybe it liked being insulted? Maybe she had to meditate in the wild way Asajj had shown her, that crashing dive into the life of the Force. Could she imitate it? Best to try it on Dathomir where at least she knew how that kind of meditation felt. Rey shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and felt herself fall headlong back into the wild currents of the Force Asajj had led her to. The holocron was with her there, in the space her meditation created, and she saw it rise and open. 

“Greetings, sister,” said a projection of a woman with facial markings like Asajj’s and a tall, pointy headdress. “You are not of Dathomir! This is unusual,” it remarked. “But you have been taught by one who was, and initiated into the Mystery. I greet you as sister and apologize for my surprise.”

“No apology necessary,” Rey said politely. “I’m Rey.”

“You may call me Mother Anaphrax,” it said. “Do you wish to learn our reproductive magicks?”

“I do, Mother,” Rey replied. 

For the next hour, Mother Anaphrax walked Rey through a Force-enabled tour of her reproductive system, opening her eyes to all the biological processes over which she could exert control. She was thrilled to discover that she could accelerate her monthly stain so the whole thing was over in five minutes, delay ovulation up to a standard week, and commit mass spermicide at will. Rey declined the lesson in ensuring a pregnancy would stick, figuring it wasn’t urgent, although Mother Anaphrax told her she’d regret it. “Later, maybe, mother,” Rey said gently. “But what I really want to know is how to know if I’ve fallen pregnant, and how to end the pregnancy when I do.”

Mother Anaphrax gave her a sharp look that reminded Rey profoundly of Yoda. “A wanton lifestyle doesn’t befit a Nightsister, you know,” she said primly. 

Rey wondered why all these old-timey Force users were so  _weird_ about this. “A Sith is manipulating my fertility to impregnate me against my will, and I seek the means to stop him, mother,” Rey said gently. “That’s all.”

“A grave evil,” Mother Anaphrax said, suddenly sympathetic. “I apologize for impugning your character. Of course this is a skill I can teach you. Are you pregnant now?”

“No, mother,” Rey said, not sure why she was addressing her this way but sure it was the right move. “I gave the fertilized egg in my womb to the Nightsisters as a boon.” 

Mother Anaphrax froze in reverent silence. “That was your initiation into the Mystery. I see. Of course, this all makes sense now. It was gifted in the Force, the embryo?”

“That was what they said.”

“A Light-Mother,” Mother Anaphrax said, and bowed her head. “That is the name we gave to one such as you, in my time. It is a queenly boon you have granted, in what I suspect must be an hour of great need for our people. Please, take heed, and I will show you the way to what you wish to know.” And she taught Rey how to reach into the Living Force inside her body, and feel what was growing there. And then she taught Rey how, if it was really her will, she could extinguish it.

“This is not a power to use lightly, young Rey, or thoughtlessly. Life, the ability to create life, it is a gift not bestowed upon everyone. But it is a much greater evil to force it on another than it is to fight that violation. Never feel that it is your obligation to welcome a pregnancy you did not seek.” 

“I never have, mother, but thank you.” 

“They raise girls sensible, where you come from,” Mother Anaphrax said approvingly. “Are you sure you aren’t interested in pregnancy maintenance magicks? You may not want them now, but you may find you want them later.”

“I’ll think on it, mother,” Rey said. “But for now, you’ve given me enough to work with. I thank you.”

“Thank you, Light-Mother,” Mother Anaphrax replied, and faded away.

Rey stretched her legs in front of her, her head swimming with the new skills she’d learned. “Right. Okay,” she said to herself. “Now just…act normal.” She stashed the holocron at the back of a drawer. “But I don’t  _feel_ normal,” she mused. “My power feels different. Greener, or - or _bloodier_, or something. I wonder if he’ll notice?”

#

She padded over to the medbay in her socks. Kylo’s eyes were open, but he was lying still, on his back. He looked less pale and clammy, but still weak.

“Can we get off this planet?” he asked.

“I needed a second pair of hands with the hyperdrive,” Rey said. “One of the first things we have to do is simultaneously disengage the failsafe and unplug the old one, and while I could rig up a way to do those both myself at the same time, I’d still be working on it now, and you and I can do it together in five minutes. But the landing gear is set.”

“Okay,” Kylo said. “I really need to get off this planet.” He heaved himself into a seated position and eyed Rey head to toe. “But it seems to agree with you. You seem - taller, or healthier, or something.” 

“I think the powers that be on this planet aren’t particularly fond of men, especially men they suspect are Sith.”

“Fair enough,” Kylo shrugged wearily. “They’re entitled to their opinion.”

“They did give us the tip on this hyperdrive I brought back, though,” Rey said. Among other things.

“They want me gone. Feeling’s mutual,” he muttered. “Glad I didn’t dream the hyperdrive though. What do you need me to do?”

Rey walked him through the steps to help her remove the broken hyperdrive and put it in room 3 where she could try to repair it at her leisure. But she could see that even the effort of getting up and moving around was taxing Kylo’s reserves. Something in the Nightsisters’ caverns had really affected him, and she was concerned about whether the malaise would lift when he left the planet. “Okay, go lie down,” she said. “I’ll come get you if I need you, but I think I’ve got this from here on.” She watched him stagger down the hall with concern. 

It was the work of three or four hours to get the antique hyperdrive patched into the _Needle_’s propulsion system. As Rey had anticipated, most of the work was in getting the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art navicomputer to communicate back and forth with a decades-old hyperdrive. The communications protocol had been versioned a couple dozen times since, and Rey had a hard time figuring out how to roll back the navicomputer’s protocols so it wouldn’t send the hyperdrive instructions it didn’t know how to follow. Eventually she found a manual section called “Backwards compatibility: manual adjustments” which told her how to adjust the navicomputer back to 0 BBY settings for “reset and maintenance reasons”; painfully aware that there were about twenty intervening standard years unaccounted for, Rey said a little prayer to the old salvage gods and just kept hitting the same key past when the manual said to. She made a concerned face as the version indicator rolled over, suddenly showing astronomically high numbers. 

“Kriff that,” she said, hitting the undo key. “We’ll leave it at 0 BBY settings and see if we can’t update the hyperdrive.”

Of course it wasn’t trivial to locate a complete hyperdrive maintenance manual on the HoloNet for an ARC-170, but it wasn’t  _hard_ , really. You could find a manual for pretty much any hyperdrive that had been produced in the last century if the manufacturer was still in business, and as Rey quickly learned, there had at some point been a staggeringly huge number of ARC-170s in service. There was still a sizable hobbyist community, well, probably at least hundreds of sentients, swapping tips on how to get wrecked ARC-170s airborne again. And after fifteen minutes browsing their HoloNet sites Rey hit pay dirt: someone had written their own ARC-170 firmware updates, having reverse engineered the protocols for a vintage ARC-170 they wanted to update with a more modern weapons control system so they could use it for low-altitude target shooting. Rey shuddered to think what a racket you could make using those oversized laser cannons to bullseye local wildlife, but firmware was firmware, and he’d confirmed it had worked with a holorecording of his exploits so she felt it had to be solid enough to try.

Rey downloaded the firmware onto a data stick and popped it into the hyperdrive. Then she readjusted the version on the navicomputer to meet the hyperdrive in the middle. “It’s like time travel,” she said to the navicomputer in a reassuring tone as she adjusted its settings again. “I’m sure you’ve always wanted to know what it was like to be a navicomputer in,” she consulted the HoloNet site again, “5 ABY, right?”

The navicomputer made a skeptical blatting noise.

“Well, it’s just for now, once the hyperdrive is working again we’ll be sure to go to a civilized planet where we can pick up a better one. Or maybe I’ll repair the old one, that’d be even better, wouldn’t it?” She picked up the data cable. “Here goes nothing,” she said, and plugged it in. 

The navicomputer detected the hyperdrive, recognized its hardware and firmware versions correctly, and began its diagnostic and recalibration routines. Rey heaved a huge sigh of relief. It said the hyperdrive was in working order but overdue for a self-cleaning cycle, which Rey conceded was almost certainly true, and told it to go ahead with the hour-long procedure. In the meantime, she thought, it was high time to figure out where to go to get a hyperdrive that wasn’t a relic. And for that she’d need to wake up Kylo Ren.

He was snoring peacefully when she tiptoed into the medbay. She’d seen him asleep several times since they’d begun traveling together, but h is sleep was usually more fitful and disturbed ; she hated to wake him. She brushed a thumb gently along his cheekbone and whispered his name. He captured her hand in his and opened his brown eyes slowly. “Rey,” he replied. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. I think. The hyperdrive is doing some maintenance. I’m reasonably sure it’ll get us off planet and into hyperspace, it’s lucky this ship is so light, but we eventually need to get one that isn’t such a museum piece. It’s going to take us a lot longer to get places than we’d prefer given the nature of our quest.”

“I figured. I know a good mechanic on Telos IV who won’t ask too many questions, further along the Hydian Way, if you think we can get that far.”

Rey pulled up the galaxy map on the medbay console and chewed her lip. “Yeah, I expect it’ll get us there.  As far as I can tell it’s in good shape, and we can use it pretty much indefinitely assuming it gets us offplanet at all. It may be slow going, though. Hyperdrives are a lot faster than they used to be.”

“That’s all right. Maybe we’ll figure out how to fix the old hyperdrive while we’re enroute.”

Rey pulled herself up to sit on the table next to the medbay cot where he’d been asleep. “Are you feeling any better?”

He considered the question. “Maybe. Slightly.” His color seemed better, but he still seemed drained and slow.

“Your sleep seemed - good.”

“I haven’t had nightmares here like I have everywhere else.”

“I wonder why.”

“This planet is weird. I should have just trusted my instincts and stayed in the ship, but I was worried - you weren’t acting like yourself, and I just had to - ” He reached out and took her hand.

“You wanted to make sure I was okay. I understand.” _You dear, sweet, idiot of a man_, she thought to herself.

“And my instincts weren’t wrong. Dathomir _has_ changed you. I don’t know how, but you feel it too, don’t you? What was the ritual you were doing with that ghost? It didn’t feel like anything I’ve felt in the Force before.” He seemed scared, strangely vulnerable and childlike. It made Rey uncomfortable.

“I’m not - that’s a conversation we should save for offplanet,” Rey said gently, pulling her hand away from him. “I’m going to go check on the nav system. Go back to sleep, Kylo. I’ll set a course for the Telos system when the hyperdrive boots.” 

She glanced behind herself as she left the room to make sure he was lying back down. He was already asleep.

Forty-five minutes later Rey put in the coordinates for Telos IV and gritted her teeth from nerves. The navicomputer chugged away for a minute, confirmed the instruction had been sent to the hyperdrive, and lifted off. “May the Force be with us,” she murmured, thinking that at least if they died doing this Kylo would get to die in his sleep.

The ship left the atmosphere and positioned itself to jump. Rey held her breath. 

Rey let her breath out again as she felt the ship shudder into hyperspace. 

#

A few minutes later, Kylo emerged from the medbay. “I feel  _great_ ,” he announced. “And look at us, we’re in hyperspace. Rey, I’m sorry I ever used ‘scavenger’ as a pejorative. Excellent work.”

“Is this what you’re always like when you’ve gotten more than fifteen minutes of sleep in a standard day?” Rey asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I feel as if I’d spent the last couple of days carrying very, very heavy things and now I’m so relieved to have put them down I feel I could do anything. There’s a new spring in my step. That was a bad planet, Rey.”

“No accounting for taste,” she said. “I rather liked it.” 

He shook himself dramatically, like a wet tooka. “You’re weird. Anyway, what’s next? We could take a look at that hyperdrive, or we could do some sparring, or we could, I don’t know, make an elaborate meal, what sounds good? Do you know how long it’ll take to get to Telos IV?”

“Navicomputer claims it’s three days, but who knows how it got that number - we really can’t possibly know, that’s how hacked-together this whole nav system is now. I hope your ship mechanic isn’t fancy. They might be offended.”

“She was one of the few people Han Solo trusted with the _Falcon_. Definitely not fancy.” 

“Hm!” Rey replied, not wanting to comment on anything related to Han Solo. That was always a conversational danger zone. “Well, I’ve definitely had enough of fiddling around with fine motor skills for the next day or so. I’ll take an elaborate meal if I can mostly watch and I’m definitely not up to any more hardware engineering for a minute. But a spar sounds like fun.”

“You’re on,” he said, grin too goofy to be borne. They headed down to the practice space, trash talking as they went. 

#

Rey was anxious as she and Kylo warmed up. She had a suspicion that Kylo would be rather blatantly reminded of his previous sleepy observation that her orientation to the Force had changed, and that the spar would soon give way to an awkward, tense conversation, or possibly just an argument, or perhaps just a physical fight. Part of her wished she’d asked for the meal first, but it didn’t seem sporting to change her mind now. 

And then she picked up her lightsaber and there was no doubt in her mind that a confrontation was coming, because the hum of the deactivated saber in her hand was completely new. 

Yeah, this was going to get weird.

She assumed her initial stance and powered on. At least her blade hadn’t somehow changed color as an additional tipoff. Kylo powered his on too, and the fight began. 

At first, things felt pretty normal. She blocked, parried, fought as dirty as she always had. But as the pace began to pick up, Rey felt additional reserves of raw power she’d never been able to draw on before. Suddenly, the size and strength advantage Kylo’d always had over her began to feel like a liability for him. She wasn’t just more able to bob and weave and sneak strikes in; she was faster, with sharper edges. Her instincts felt sharper too.

She almost got a touch on him and felt her mouth curl into a vicious, feral grin as she met his eyes. But when the eye contact was made, they both faltered for a moment. She wasn’t sure why he did, but she was shocked at the mix of desperate fear and unmistakable arousal she saw on his face. Kylo Ren was instinctively fighting for his life, even though they both knew they had their lightsabers set to training strength, and he was  _getting off on it. _ The twisted bastard! 

And, gods, so was she. 

Rey snarled and redoubled her efforts. Within ninety seconds she’d backed him into a corner. They both froze, her lightsaber at his neck, breathing hard. 

“Solah,” he whispered, his eyes wide, his breath coming in gasps. The eye contact he made was deep and dark and scary. The hum of her lightsaber and the hissing crackle of his seemed to fill all available space in the room.

“I don’t know what that means,” she whispered back, breathing just as hard. 

“It means I yield,” he said, even quieter. 

They extinguished their sabers and dropped them on the ground as one.

“What was that,” he said breathily, stepping forward to close the already tiny space between them.

“I’m not sure,” she replied, not backing away.

They were close enough to kiss if he’d only bend a bit lower. And then he bent a bit lower, and then they were kissing, and it wasn’t possible to tell whose idea it had been, but it was clear that it had been an excellent idea and nobody was arguing that it wasn’t. 

They broke apart a minute later, both still flushed and breathless. “You learned to use the dark side of the Force on Dathomir,” Kylo said. “That’s what that was. It isn’t using you back. You’re just drawing on it for more power without feeding it anything of yourself, without letting your anger or hate take over. You’re still in control. How did you learn that? That isn’t even supposed to be possible.”

“I’m not,” Rey said reflexively.

“You are,” he said. He kissed her again. “_Hells_, Rey. Leave it to you to figure out some new way to use a side of the Force I’ve been studying for years in the course of an afternoon. You are the most _infuriating_ scavenger I ever met.” 

“Well, I did do a weird ritual with some ghosts down there. And one of them may have mentioned straying from the Jedi path, just a bit. But they never said there was anything _dark_ going on.” 

He rolled his eyes. “Nobody does. Why do you think they always talk about the dark side of the Force in terms of seduction? They never come out and say, hey, Jedi, want to be full of rage and desperate pain all the time in exchange for power? Nobody would ever turn to the dark side if the dark side were honest about the stakes.” 

“Do you think I’ve turned to the dark side?”

He searched her eyes for a moment, and shook his head. 

“No. But you are tapping something deep and weird in the Force. I’m not sure what it is. It’s of the dark, but it isn’t dark, exactly. If that makes sense.” 

“Not really.” 

“Tell me about the ritual.” He didn’t leave any room in his tone to say no. “I want to know what they promised you.” 

“I - they had - ” Rey stopped and took a deep breath. “She said she could give me the means to end pregnancies with the Force.” 

Kylo stopped short from surprise, then took a rather precipitous seat on the floor. 

“I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but it wasn’t that,” he said.

“I don’t see why not,” she replied, taking a seat more gracefully beside him. “I was annoyed I hadn’t thought of the possibility myself.”

“I guess it’s just - I just never thought of the Force that way.”

“Most Jedi don’t, I think,” she said gently. “And most men don’t, either. But their order of Force users were female-dominated, or maybe even just entirely female, before they fell to genocide at the hands of the Sith. Of course they had different research and development priorities than an order of celibate knights.” 

“I think I understand why such a power would feel different in the Force. It’s dark, in that it can’t really be described without destruction and the exertion of power. But it’s also such a _personal_ thing - it’s not about subjugating an enemy the way Sith powers are. It’s about exerting control over your own body and making choices about your attachments.”

“Maybe. I mean, there’s nothing inherently light about snuffing out new life before it’s had a chance to grow,” Rey said, expressing a qualm that had been with her since her pregnancy struggles had begun.

“But there’s nothing inherently dark about making informed decisions about what lifeforms you can and can’t take responsibility for.” A shadow of a frown passed over Kylo’s face and Rey could see he was thinking about his own childhood, being handed from parent to droid to parent to uncle before falling under the thrall of the first sentient who ever told him he was anything other than a difficult case.

“I don’t know. It’s certainly not a straightforward ethical question. But yes, I guess I’ve been dabbling in something - something they didn’t exactly teach at the Jedi Academy.” 

“Well, whatever it’s done to you,” Kylo said, kissing her again, “I _like_ it. Being close to you feels like sitting by a roaring fire on a cold night.” 

“I feel better. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m not pregnant anymore so I have more energy, but I don’t think it is.” 

He shook his head. “No. This more, uh, ambiguous power? It agrees with you. You were fighting something in yourself, walking the line of the Luke Skywalker rendition of the Ancient Jedi Texts orthodoxy of the Light Side of the Force, as handed down engraved on synthstone tablets from the days of Master Vodo. That probably suits some people, but it never suited me. And clearly it didn’t suit you either.”

This reminded Rey of something Asajj had said. “Speaking of Force alignments not suiting people, one of my ghost friends made an interesting comment on your fighting style. She said the way you’d been taught to channel your rage through your lightsaber, it was clear to her that your master hadn’t considered you a true apprentice, and was clipping your wings rather than letting you discover the full extent of your power.” 

Kylo sighed. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Snoke always did seem like he was saving the best of me for later, if that makes sense.”

“Force, Kylo. What a creepy feeling to get from someone who was supposed to be a mentor.”

“Snoke’s voice showed up unbidden in my mind when I was barely in my puberty, whispering sweet tales of the power I’d have if only I’d leave everything behind and swear fealty to him. I could list out all the things that were creepy about how Snoke treated me, and ‘saving the best of me for later’ wouldn’t crack the top twenty,” Kylo continued bitterly. “But yes, occasionally he’d hint that someday he’d really hand me the cylinders to my power and I’d be able to burn anyone who’d ever crossed us to cinders at a glance. When I killed him I wondered if it was a lie he’d told to string me along, or if it wasn’t, and he’d sent me into battle after battle on his behalf knowing that he’d crippled me on purpose. I don’t…honestly know which I hoped was true.” 

“I’m sorry,” Rey said, genuinely grieving his youth. “Maybe you should learn Nightsister Force techniques too. Maybe they’d help.”

“I don’t think so,” Kylo said. “But maybe someday I’ll run across the Force sect that fits me best, like you seem to have. In the meantime, I’ll meditate on what your friend noticed.” 

“If you want to meditate together…”

“I _hate_ pair meditation,” Kylo snapped. 

Rey raised her hands in surrender. “No offense intended. I only thought maybe we could work together.”

Kylo seemed chagrined. He knew he’d gone too far. “Sorry. Overreaction. It’s just always been an excuse for masters to get into my head.”

“I’m not your master, and I never will be.” She took his hand. “You don’t have to trust me with that. I know how intimate it can be. And probably invasive, under some circumstances. But if you ever want help, untangling things…”

“Thanks. But no thanks, not today. Not right now.” He sighed. “I’m jangled up enough, contending with this scary new Rey. You were _vicious_ in that spar. Like an avenging angel from Corellian myths. Last thing I need is that same power in my mind.” He paused. “Want to go again?”

Rey laughed happily. “Best two out of three, loser does dishes?”

“You’re on,” Kylo said, reaching for his saber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a day late! School holiday yesterday and things were a bit hectic at home :)


	13. Chapter 13

Of course Rey won all three. But it was closer each time. She could feel Kylo adjusting to the new contours of her power, and it struck her once again what a skilled fighter he was, and what a joy it was to have him as an opponent. She almost hoped he had some as-yet-unknown power waiting to be unleashed, just to see what he’d be like to fight. She blushed thinking about it.

“So what’s on the menu tonight?” she asked as they made their way up to the main level. “Our fresh ingredients are getting pretty low.”

“They are,” he said. “I know it’s cheating given I lost that dishwashing wager fair and square, but I was just thinking we’d throw some embellishments into instant noodles.”

“It is cheating, but I’ll allow it.” 

Kylo moved into the kitchen and began getting out knives and root vegetables and things from the refrigeration unit and spices. “Hope there’s a decent place to buy produce on Telos IV.”

“We’ll survive,” Rey said with a shrug, grabbing a knife and cutting board and chopping up an unidentifiable root. “I’d never really eaten anything _but_ portions and rations before I left Jakku. Maybe once a year I’d get my hands on something fresh, but I barely knew what to do with it.”

“Tsk,” Kylo said with a wince. “I’m sorry.” 

“Didn’t know what I was missing, did I?”

“Guess not, but that doesn’t make it right.” He put some water on to boil. “We can prepare these vegetables and then slow-cook the instant noodles in water instead of using the heat pack. I think it’ll work, and then it’s a little more like real food.” He rummaged in a high cupboard. “Seems ridiculous to have wine with instant noodles…”

“Luckily, we’re ridiculous,” Rey said.

“Indeed,” he agreed, twisting off the cap and getting down a pair of glasses. 

“So,” Rey began, after a sip, “now that we have the means to stop these pregnancies with the Force, I wonder if your nightmares are going to stop too.” 

“If they do I guess we can just…”

“Just go back to our regular lives. Go back to you being Supreme Leader, me being public enemy #1.” 

“Yeah,” Kylo said, sitting down at the counter. “We could do that.” He sighed. “Go back to Mustafar, just let you fly away in your X-Wing.”

“It’s kind of the only thing _to_ do.” Rey echoed his sigh. “_If_, of course, the nightmares are over. If not, we still need to -” 

“You don’t have to quest for weeks around the galaxy to try to fix my bad dreams. I can handle them.” 

“Kylo.” The idea of leaving him to his nightmares was entirely ludicrous. What kind of monster did he think she was?

“Seriously. I’m a grown man.” 

“You’re saying that because you just got your first restful sleep in months. You can’t handle them. They’re tearing you apart.” 

He got up to stir the noodles and taste the broth. “They’re just dreams.” He didn’t make eye contact.

“I can feel you in the Force, sometimes, when you have them. They aren’t. They’re invasions. If whatever or whoever has been attacking us is done with it now that they know they aren’t going to get what they want, fine. We can go our separate ways. But I won’t leave you to this on your own.” 

Kylo stirred the noodles thoughtfully. “I don’t know what I did to earn such loyalty,” he said quietly.

“It’s not even loyalty!” Rey scoffed, refusing to admit to herself or to him that it probably was something like that. “It’s just decency. You helped me find my solution, such as it is. Of course I want to see it through so you can find yours too. And of course, it’d be easier not to have to worry about this at all! It’s not like I’m really keen to give myself Force terminations every few weeks for the rest of my natural life. I mean, one of these days I’ll likely want to have a baby, you know. Hard to make that work when these keep showing up unbidden. I’ve only got the one spot for them, you know.”

Kylo looked up at her, surprised. “You’d want a baby? After all this?” 

“Someday, when my life has calmed down.”

“What if it never does?”

“I guess I’ll have to make a hard decision, then. But I’m young still - I don’t need to worry about that yet. I don’t want one now, at any rate, and no offense intended at all but I definitely don’t want yours.” 

“None taken. I don’t want mine either,” he said with a laugh, removing the noodles from heat. “I can’t imagine wanting to be a parent.” 

Rey refrained from comment, though many remarks occurred to her, and busied herself dishing out noodles and broth. 

“Grubsticks?” Kylo asked.

“Ugh,” Rey groaned. “I guess I should.” Kylo took out two pairs and handed her one. 

“Use the Force,” he said. “No shame in it when you’re learning.” 

Rey tucked in, struggling with the utensils. “Why anyone chooses to eat with these when forks have already been invented is beyond me.”

“Uncle Luke used to say they were ‘an elegant dining implement, from a more civilized age’ and smile to himself, if that helps,” Kylo said. “I really like eating with them, personally. It means I take a little more time with my food.” 

“That’s never been something I had any desire to do,” Rey grumbled. “Gives other people an opening.” 

“Try it now,” he suggested. “Eating can be as meditative an activity as anything else, if you slow your pace. Maybe you’ll learn something. Promise I’m not eyeing your noodles - I’ve got more than enough.” 

The table was silent but for the sounds of chewing and clinking utensils for a few minutes. Rey closed her eyes and used her grubsticks with deliberate concentration. She did find herself noticing the flavors and textures more. The wine certainly had hidden depths she’d never explored. 

Then she noticed that she’d stopped hearing anything from Kylo’s side of the table. She opened her eyes and the hunger in his expression as he gazed at her across the table was undeniable. The hunger wasn’t focused on the noodles.

“More than enough, huh,” she said to him, her tone wry. 

“I - sorry,” he stammered, his ears flushing bright red. He went silent.

It wasn’t clear whose turn it was to talk. 

“Look, I - ” he began, just as Rey said, “It’s not - ”

“Sorry,” they both said. By this point their faces were both crimson, their noodles entirely forgotten, as they looked at one another across a table that seemed suddenly both too small and too big.

“Kriff, this got so _awkward_,” Rey groaned. 

“Forget it,” Kylo said. “Let’s finish our dinner.”

“Do you really want to?” Rey felt suddenly, frantically desperate to do whatever she could to thin the sexual tension in the atmosphere. And almost painfully aware that there was exactly one thing that was going to do it.

“No,” Kylo said, standing up.

“I don’t either,” Rey said, standing up as well. “My room or yours?”

“My bed’s bigger,” Kylo blurted.

“Done,” Rey said, taking his hand, leading the way, wondering just what she was getting herself into with this absolute mess of a man.

#

Although Rey was pretty sure she was taking the lead, it was hard to deny that Kylo was very large, and thus had to set the pace to some extent. For instance, although she tried to push him against the door to kiss him, she also had to grab his head to get him low enough that kissing was possible. After a few seconds of that he managed to disengage the latch of the door with his hand, perhaps by accident, and they both fell through as it slid open. He landed hard on his back, with her on top of him. 

“You okay?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Wind knocked out of me, but nothing’s, uh, broken.”

“Good,” she said, kissing him thoroughly. “Glad to hear it, because I have got _plans_.” 

“Okay,” he said dumbly. 

She reached for his crotch, feeling for the hardness there, pleased to find it. He let out a huff of breath and a thin, high groan as she rubbed up and down the length through his trousers. “I’m not sure if I have the patience to be fully nude for this,” she whispered, half to herself. 

“I don’t,” Kylo breathed, undoing his pants and wiggling out of them, still on the floor. 

“Okay.” Rey followed suit and only removed her leggings. 

His cock was standing straight up, base at a perfect right angle from his body, length sublimely curved toward his belly button. It was about the size she’d expected, given the size of the rest of him, and would have been sort of intimidating if Rey hadn’t been so beyond ready to have it inside her. She took hold of it with her right hand, just to sort of take its measure, and Kylo let out a pathetic sigh. It was so hard it felt like it had to be almost painful to have it touched. “Gods, Rey, you don’t know - ”

“Think I might,” she said, bestirring herself from the floor. “Did you want to move to the bed before we get started in earnest?”

“Too far,” he hissed as she moved her hand up and down.

“Fine by me,” she said, and moved to lower herself onto his length. Despite his size, she was so utterly soaked in her own juices that getting him inside was no trouble. On the contrary, it felt perfect, as if an itch she’d been unable to reach for months had finally gotten scratched. “Ohhhh,” she groaned. “That is _nice_.”

“I’m not going to last long,” he cautioned. “I’m, ah. It’s - I don’t have a lot of experience - with this sort of - ”

He made a strangled sound as Rey began to move up and down on him, achingly slowly, a look of deep concentration on her face. After only a few strokes she felt an orgasm approaching - it  _had_ been a while, after all - and picked up the pace to ride it through. As she reached its crest she saw his face tense and then slacken. 

Rey bobbed up and down a few more times as her own orgasm subsided, and felt him softening inside her. “Mmm,” she said. “Well, not going to say that was the  _longest_ sexual intercourse I’ve ever had…”

“Sorry,” Kylo stammered, his face utterly mortified. “As I was trying to say, well, it was sort of my first, ah,” he paused, trying to put his thoughts together. 

Rey’s eyes flew open, her hand flying up to cover her mouth in surprise. “You were a virgin. Oh, stars, I’m sorry! I would have tried to make it a little less, ah, frantic…”

“No, it was - it was perfect. You can’t possibly apologize.”

“I just assumed - argh, so embarrassing I didn’t think of it. But of course, you were in Jedi school, and then under Snoke’s thumb, and then you’ve been just camping out in your grouch castle on the volcano planet, when were you going to fit it in, how silly of me,” she trailed off, realizing she had no idea how to end the observation of Kylo’s loveless life and had just called his architectural triumph a “grouch castle.” 

“I know I’m a little old not to have done this before.”

“Extenuating circumstances! Anyway, you were just what I needed,” she said, a fond smile on her face as she stroked his cheek with her fingers, planting a soft kiss there, and moved her body off his now-soft cock. “And now if we want to do it again later we’ll both still have plenty of energy.”

“Plus we haven’t even seen the top halves of one another’s bodies.”

“Well, I’ve seen yours.” 

“What! When?” 

“In the bacta chamber, laserbrain. Among other places. You don’t exactly keep your massive torso hidden away. It’s very impressive.” Rey made her way to the fresher to clean herself up, leaving the door open so they could keep talking.

“Oh. Right. Uh, thank you.” She could hear him pulling his trousers back on.

“What would you say to finishing those noodles?”

Kylo chuckled. “Bet they’re still steaming.”

He wasn’t wrong. 

#

“So…now what,” Kylo began, after a few bites.

“I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind doing that again, as I’d mentioned. Perhaps as soon as later this evening,” Rey said calmly. 

“Okay,” he said dumbly. 

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” she said gently. “It can just be sex. You don’t have to reorient your whole worldview, or renounce your title to swear a loyalty oath to me, or anything like that.”

“It felt really, really _great_, though.” 

“It does that, yes.” She sighed. “But it’s probably best not to make any life-changing decisions while you’re postcoital. Eat your noodles.” 

They ate quietly for a few minutes. He kept his eyes on his food.

“Look, if you’ve got something to say you’d better just say it.” 

He was quiet for a minute, clearly struggling with how to phrase what he was about to say. Then he blurted, “This probably sounds petty, but I was hurt that you referred to my palace as a ‘grouch castle.’”

Rey burst out laughing, and couldn’t stop. Every time she tried, she looked at his face and started again. At first he made an admirable show of maintaining a straight face, but eventually he started to smile too, probably just because she was so helpless against her own laughter. She started crying from laughing so hard, and within a minute or so of this, he was laughing too, though he didn’t seem sure what he was laughing at.

“I’m, I’m sorry,” she wheezed through her tears. “I just, ahaha. That wasn’t what I was expecting,” she closed with a cough. “Sorry.” She sniffled and coughed, and took a big sip of water. “I’m sorry I called your palace a ‘grouch castle.’ I didn’t know if it had a name and I kind of started thinking it was the sort of place that really ought to have a name, and you were such an _epic_ grouch when we were there, and one thing just sort of, you know,” she trailed off. “I am sorry. I know you’re fond of your grouch castle.”

They both watched one another struggle for a moment to suppress their laughter, and finally both failed and burst into another round of giggles. 

“Kriff, why is this so _funny_,” Kylo gasped. 

“I don’t _know_,” Rey giggled back. 

“Proximity alert,” said the ship, with the familiar lurch of a sudden drop out of hyperspace. And suddenly they were both deathly serious. 

#

Rey and Kylo tripped over one another getting out to the cockpit to see what had triggered the alert. They made it to the view screen at around the same moment and were both utterly baffled by what lay before the ship.

“That’s no planet,” Rey ventured.

“Is it a space station?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like a built structure…like something I’ve seen, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“It’s not on the chart.” Kylo paused. “And we didn’t get a tractor notification, but it feels like it’s pulling us in.”

“You’d know about this, if it were a First Order thing, right?”

“They’d be hailing. This isn’t the First Order.”

Suddenly, there was a bright light, and Kylo and Rey woke up in an entirely different place.

“What the kriff? Where - who landed the ship? Where are we?” 

Kylo rubbed his head. “You’re asking all the right questions. I don’t know either.”

“I don’t like this,” Rey said, trying to power the ship back on. She hit the right buttons, but nothing happened.

“I don’t think it’s going to let us leave.”

“It?”

“Whatever it is that pulled us in. This structure, or planetoid mass, or whatever it is. Something here wants to talk.”

“I don’t respond well to these sorts of inducements to talk.”

“I know you don’t,” Kylo said, giving her a fond look. “But, notwithstanding, I don’t think we’re going anywhere until this place has done whatever it wants to do.”

Rey blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes with a huff upwards and folded her arms over her chest. “Fine. I guess we’re getting out. But I don’t like it. Let’s bring rations, just in case.”

“Of course.” Kylo was already packing his rucksack with ration bars, rope, light rods, and medkits. “You pack too, in case we get separated.” 

A minute later, their packs packed and boots on, Rey and Kylo extended the ramp and ventured onto the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I am SO sorry that you all read for so long waiting for some smut and then here I am with possibly the most awkward, unsatisfying sex scene I've EVER read, and I have read a lot of fanfiction. Right after I wrote it I chatted a friend "god, i just culminated 40k+ words of extremely slow burn with the most sadistically awkward sex scene possibly in all of star wars fandom history??? i feel cruel having written this" and my opinion really hasn't changed.
> 
> Aaaanyway...if you ragequit this fic I totally understand :D


	14. Chapter 14

“This is…weird…” Rey ventured, looking around her. “It feels like a planet, even though it looked like, well,” she trailed off. She had remembered what the mass reminded her of; however, as it reminded her of two Sith holocrons stacked on top of one another, and she had no interest in having a conversation about why she knew what a Sith holocron looked like, she kept her mouth shut. 

“It feels kind of like a planet, but kind of like a dream,” Kylo said. “Things look normal and pretty and summery and then you see a rock the size of a mountain floating in the air.” He gestured at it.

“Right. Not like a _regular_ planet.”

“But not like a Force-alive sort of planet like Dagobah, either.”

“Right.” 

They fell silent. They could see a lone figure approaching out of the hills. As it grew closer, Rey’s face lit up. “No way! _Anakin_??” She broke into a run, leaving Kylo behind.

Anakin Skywalker, apparently solid flesh and looking not much older than the two of them, gave a friendly wave and accelerated to a jog to close the distance between them. “Rey!” 

“Pleasure to see you again,” Rey said, offering a hand for a friendly shake. He felt as solid as he looked. Kylo hung back, looking wary. “Come on, Kylo, it’s your sainted grandfather.” 

“What is this witchcraft,” Kylo muttered, catching up.

Anakin shrugged. “It’s the Force. Are you telling me the Force has never taken you anywhere weird, Ben Solo?”

“That’s not my name.”

“Sure it is.” Anakin enfolded Kylo in a full-contact bear hug. Kylo didn’t reciprocate, and let his arms hang limply at his sides instead. 

“You’re deceased,” Kylo said skeptically.

“It’s complicated,” Anakin admitted. “But we have all the time in the universe to talk about it. Well…maybe.” 

“Maybe?” Kylo narrowed his eyes.

“We have some time. I think. Come with me.” Anakin turned around and went back the way he came. “We’ve got to get you both indoors before dark. It gets cold. And…strange.”

“It’s strange now,” Rey observed.

“Stranger.” They both bestirred themselves to follow as he sped ahead. “I’m trying to remember exactly what I told you, Ben, the last time we spoke.”

Kylo seethed. “I don’t use that name anymore, Grandfather.” 

“I’m not calling you that absurd pseudo-Sith name you came up with. You sound like a jizz bandleader. What about a nice Tattooinian name? Shlomo Skywalker, say? My mom did always tell me if I’d had a brother she would have called him Shlomo.”

“Ben is fine,” Kylo muttered. Rey smiled into her hand behind him. 

“As you like it,” Anakin replied. “Anyway, as I was saying. We had a long talk, and I know I mentioned I was looking into your situation with the Force, but I can’t recall exactly how much I’d learned.” 

“You said you thought it might be your Sith master up to, I quote, ‘his old tricks,’ but you had to do more investigation. And then you asked me, easily, five hundred questions about Jedi lore and history and philosophy, and astronavigation, and diplomacy, and made me show you all my katas, and critiqued them, and told me my education had been very sloppy, and then you said, ‘Whoops, gotta go,’ and disappeared.” In most satisfactory fashion, this answered Rey’s long-standing curiosity about what exactly Kylo had talked about with Anakin for hours on that long day he’d spent meditating. 

“It’s all coming back,” Anakin said, with a grin that wasn’t wholly friendly. “Well, I was right. It was my Sith master. We thought we had his powers contained, but he’s somehow managed to wriggle around or through the containment we set up. I guess I’m not surprised.”

“We?” Rey asked. “Is someone else here?”

“Yeah, but she’s busy, you’ll meet her later,” Anakin said. “We’re still working out how to stop him, because we’re not sure yet what he’s doing. So I figured it’d be a good idea to bring you both into the situation, given you’re the affected parties.” 

“What exactly _is_ the situation, though? Where are we?” Rey asked. 

“It doesn’t really…I don’t know. This place was called Mortis, long ago. But it served a different function then. It probably needs a new name, but we haven’t given it one. We haven’t been here very long.”

“How about Shlomo,” Kylo muttered under his breath, kicking at a rock in the path. Anakin shot a sharp look at him, but didn’t respond.

“Wait. Mortis! You told me about Mortis,” Rey interrupted. “When we first met, when you were Darth Vader. You said you’d had a bunch of weird Force nexus encounters but that Mortis was where you had the deepest one. And that it would come to us if it wanted us.” 

“I _did_ say that, didn’t I?” He snapped a finger, remembering. “Always hard to keep track of what goes on when I’m in the suit. Nothing is quite the same. Well, there we go. It’s here, this was Mortis. But it’s different than it used to be.” 

“We’ve never been here before, so how it used to be isn’t informative,” Kylo grumbled. “All you’re saying is ‘it’s different than a thing you don’t know anything about,’ which doesn’t _tell_ us anything.” 

“_You_ try and describe the function and experience of a Force nexus. I’ll wait,” Anakin snapped. 

“Maybe if it’s indescribable you should talk about something else,” Kylo sulked. “What’s going on with your Sith master, for instance. Who else is here. Something that might be useful.” 

Just then, a rumble sounded from above them, and before any of them could react, boulders tumbled down the slope above them, knocking out a section of the path and knocking Rey off balance. Before she was even aware of what had happened, she was sliding down the steep slope below the path on a slick layer of dust and pebble.

“Rey!” Kylo screamed, his voice pure terror, and she felt her body caught with the Force and stopped short in its descent. She floated back up towards the path, but as her head emerged over the edge she saw that Kylo was focusing so intently on lifting her that another batch of boulders was about to hit him in the back. She gave the boulders a push with her mind, stopping them before they could hit him, and letting them drop gently to the path just as he lifted her onto it and landed her gently on her feet. 

“Thanks,” she said, her grin incandescent. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

“You too,” he replied, looking around at the boulders. “That could’ve been bad.” 

“All right, lovebirds,” Anakin said with a roll of his eyes. “That probably wasn’t a good sign. I worried your presence here might…awaken something. And maybe I was right.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Kylo asked as they scrambled over the boulders that now littered the path between them and Anakin.

“Who knows,” Anakin said. “Getting dark. Pick up the pace.” A cold wind was starting to whistle through the canyon, and Rey could see ice forming in the puddles along the path.

“Was he like this in your Force visions?” Kylo said under his breath to Rey.

“No, I think he was nicer one-on-one. And less, I don’t know, enigmatic? Confusing?”

“I don’t think he likes me.” 

“I mean, maybe he likes you a little? He thinks it’s funny how easy it is to ruffle your feathers.” 

“I think he’s a bully.”

“_He_ thinks you take yourself too seriously. And he isn’t wrong.” Rey picked up the pace and left the area in which Kylo’s whispers could be heard. But she thought she heard him muttering more dissatisfied grumbles to himself. She hoped she’d get a minute in private with Anakin so she could ask him to cool it. Not that Kylo needed her to protect him, or anything. But he was much harder to deal with when he was bristling like a spinebarrel. 

“Almost there,” Anakin called back in their general direction. Their path turned to stairs, and they found themselves approaching a very imposing black building.

#

“Wow, what a…room,” Rey said as they stepped into an enormous hall. “Throne room?”

“You could call it that,” Anakin said. “Not that we use the throne for anything now.” He gestured at it. The throne had a big potted plant resting on it.

“You use it for something,” Rey joked. “Where else would you keep that plant?” The joke was funny because there were millions of other locations in the hall where the plant could have been kept. It was that huge.

Anakin seemed preoccupied with something going on in his mind, and didn’t reply. Rey and Kylo looked at each other, concerned, and wordlessly agreed not to bother him. 

“Ration bars for latemeal, I guess?” Kylo said.

“I have some instant noodles too, if you aren’t tired of them,” Rey said. “We’ll have to use the heat pack this time, though.” 

Anakin seemed to remember suddenly that they were there. “You probably won’t be here more than a couple of days, so don’t worry about conserving your food.”

“Do you eat, Anakin? Are you…that sort of alive?” Rey asked. “We’ve got enough to share.”

“Nope, but thanks for asking.”

“Are there things to eat on this planet, if we need them?”

Anakin spread his arms wide. “The Force will provide, I assume.” He got a thoughtful look on his face. “I don’t remember if I ate anything on Mortis. I think I didn’t. I don’t think we even got hungry, and if we had, I’m not sure I would have been willing to eat any food Mortis provided.” 

“But this isn’t Mortis? Or is it?” Kylo asked.

“It’s a good question. Mortis the physical manifestation and Mortis the inhabitants seemed so inseparable that the idea of Mortis without the gods we met here doesn’t really seem coherent. But, that said, if this were a planet, we would definitely be on the same planet. Same uncanny weather, same mountains, same buildings.”

“You met _gods_ here?” Rey asked.

“What makes you think you haven’t?” he replied in a tone so dry it was impossible to tell if he was kidding.

That shut Rey and Kylo up. Anakin didn’t crack a smile, and instead turned on his heel and left the room, heading into a dark hallway. What the kriff was going on, Rey wondered. She and Kylo shared another look as they heard his footsteps retreat down the hall.

“_Anyway_,” Kylo said, an annoyed tone in his voice, “yes, let’s have the noodles. Good thinking packing those.”

Rey got to unpacking her rucksack so she could get to the food at the bottom. “I can’t believe you meditated with your grandfather for ten hours and apparently nine and a quarter of them were spent on him quizzing you on your studies and evaluating your saber technique.” 

“More like nine and a half, but yes,” he sighed. “It wasn’t quite how I pictured him. But of course, I grew up in my mother’s house. So it wasn’t any huge surprise that the first thing he’d want to do was make sure I’d been educated properly; runs in the family, apparently.” 

“Were you disappointed? Or just surprised?”

“I’m not sure I was even surprised. Once I realized that was how it was going to be, I wondered how I could have thought he’d have been any other way.” He sighed, cracking open the noodle heat pack. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned that being a member of a family with a destiny has its highs and lows.” 

“Seems so!” Rey agreed wholeheartedly, her mouth already full of hot noodles. She swallowed. “Sorry. Yeah, you don’t make it look like it’s much fun.” 

“It has its points, but on balance…”

“You’d rather have been born to filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money?” Rey said pointedly.

Kylo winced. “I could have put that more delicately.”

“I liked that you didn’t,” Rey said, making eye contact as she smiled. She saw the tips of his ears turn pink. Just then, Anakin reentered the room.

“Things seem to be stable. You should both sleep. We’ll continue in the morning.”

“Continue what?” Kylo asked. “As far as we know, nothing has begun.” 

Anakin still seemed preoccupied. “If I give you separate rooms are you just going to wait until you think I’m gone and then sneak into the same room?”

Kylo and Rey looked at each other, calculation in their eyes. “No,” they both blurted at the same time.

Anakin rolled his eyes. “So, yes.” He gestured down the corridor. “You can sleep in there. Third on the left. Good luck.”

“Good _luck_?” Kylo asked. “With what?”

“Dreams. And it’s, uh, not the softest bed.” 

Rey and Kylo retreated down the hall together. “I wonder if we’ll dream together,” Rey speculated. “I’ve never shared a bed with a Force sensitive person before.” 

“Me neither.”

“Funny that he would assume…”

“From what I understand, he secretly married a queen with a full-time retinue of bodyguards and got her pregnant with twins and even _his own Jedi master_ didn’t know.” 

“Ah. We are dealing with a galaxy-class sneak.” 

“Yes.” 

They found their room. 

“…Cozy,” Rey reacted.

“Not even a pillow!” Kylo said, shaking his head. “Well, nothing for it.”

“We can stuff one of these blankets in an empty rucksack each,” Rey said with a shrug, getting started on hers. “Better than nothing. But it definitely won’t be as nice as sleeping on the _Needle_ would have been. And there’s no way to block the starlight from that high window.”

“It’s not a room made to promote high-quality sleep, that’s for sure.”

They took off their boots and lay down on their backs next to one another, six inches between them, heads on their rucksacks. 

“This is a very hard surface to try to sleep on,” Kylo grumbled.

“I’m sure we’ve both slept on worse,” Rey said mildly. 

“Probably,” he admitted. “Still.” He rolled his body to face away from her, his back a wall dividing the bed.

They were silent for a few minutes, the only audible sound their slow, meditative breathing. Unintentionally, they had synced their breath and were breathing in and out at the same time.

“You know,” Rey began, “he’s _assuming_ we’re having sex right now.”

“He’s probably listening at the door so he can walk in and embarrass me once we start,” Kylo mumbled bitterly.

Rey had to laugh. “You may be right.” She scooted her body a little closer to his. “Still, we could at least  _touch_ .”

“Okay. If you want.”

She rolled onto her side to face him and threw an arm over him, snuggling into his broad frame. “This okay?” 

“Yeah.”

“Mind if I just sneak this arm under your neck?”

“Go ahead.” 

Rey drew herself close, wrapping her body around his. “Much better,” she sighed, clearly relaxing into the contact.

Kylo’s body was tense for a long time. But as Rey slid into sleep, she thought she felt him releasing the tension, slowly, a little bit at a time. 

#

When they next saw each other they were sitting up. 

“Are we awake?” Rey asked Kylo.

“I don’t know.”

“Nothing feels like being awake here, anyway.” 

“I think we’re asleep. I think this is a dream.” Rey saw Kylo tense his jaw out the corner of her eye.

Luke Skywalker materialized before them. 

“Dream,” Kylo said.

“Ah. My best student and my worst nephew,” Luke said. 

“Only nephew,” Kylo groused.

“I don’t have much time. You,” he pointed at Rey, “need to keep your temper.”

“I always do,” she replied, as if by reflex. 

“No, you don’t. And you,” he pointed at Kylo, “need to dress in layers.” 

“Okay,” Kylo said tentatively. 

“That’s all,” Luke said, and vanished.

#

When she woke up in the morning Rey was still curled tightly around Kylo. She unwound herself from him slowly, tentatively, hoping not to wake him.

“I’m up already, don’t worry,” he said.

Rey yawned and stretched. “Ugh, every one of my muscles is stiff,” she groaned. “But I slept like a lothcat!”

“Did you have that dream with Uncle Luke?”

“What _was_ that?” Rey burst out. 

“Other than typical Luke Skywalker on his typical Luke Skywalker poodoo? Dress in layers!” He made a disrespectful noise.

“I’ve been meditating in his direction for years. Begging him to talk to me, continue my training. Not a sign, not a word. And I finally see him and that’s _it_? Keep your _temper_? As if that weren’t literally the very first thing Jedi ever learn?”

“Your mistake,” Kylo shrugged. “That man is a _disappointment_. Invariably.” 

“He’s the only teacher I’ve ever had!”

“I beg to differ,” Kylo pointed out mildly, as he sat up and pulled on his boots. He picked up a quilted jacket, looked it over skeptically, shrugged, and put it on. “You’ve had a handful just since you boarded the _Needle_, by my count. Some of the best.” 

“Dead people don’t count!” Rey pushed down her indignation that Kylo, who’d had years of intensive Jedi schooling, would even consider these minutes-long encounters with Force ghosts to be “teaching” of any kind. 

“Then why keep bothering Luke, another dead person?” The question was clearly rhetorical. School was wasted on the educated, Rey thought to herself. “Ration bar?”

“Thanks,” Rey said, reaching for it.

“I slept well too,” he remarked. “Anakin’s ominous hint had me worried, but I only had that shared dream. The rest of the night is a perfect and absolute blank.” 

“Good,” Rey said with a smile, pulling on her boots. “It seems like we may need the energy. Anakin sounded vaguely ominous.”

“He’s just been vaguely everything since we got here. I wonder if all Jedi get so weird and enigmatic once they’re dead.”

“In my admittedly limited experience, they’re weird and enigmatic in life, too.” 

Kylo nodded agreement. “Did we bring any of those Almakian apples?”

“No,” Rey sighed. “I think we’re out.” 

“Too bad.”

Anakin popped his head in through the door. “You two decent?” he asked by way of greeting.

“If we weren’t you’d have just seen us indecent,” Kylo pointed out. “Good morning.” 

“Morning. Sleep well?”

“Actually, yes!” Rey said cheerfully.

“Great!” Anakin responded, looking surprised. “No weird dreams?”

“One, but it was short, and not really all that weird,” Rey said. “So what’s the plan today?”

“I think it’s time for you to meet the other people who live here,” Anakin said, no small trepidation in his voice. “Maybe eat first?”

“We’ve got ration bars, mostly,” Kylo said. “We can eat while we walk. Who are they? Where are they?”

Anakin looked uncomfortable. “Follow me,” he said. Kylo wordlessly handed Rey a ration bar and grabbed another for himself, tearing open the wrapper with his teeth. He also visibly checked her belt to make sure she had her lightsaber, and felt for his. 

“Really, Anakin, is there any chance you could set some expectations for us? Clearly you don’t want to talk about what’s going on here, but we’ll find out soon enough,” Rey pointed out.

“Yeah,” Anakin said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “It’s just hard to start. I don’t know.” Rey pondered just how powerful Anakin was supposed to be and wondered what could have him so tongue-tied and nervous.

Kylo rolled his eyes. “He’s not going to tell us anything. Fine. Lead the way.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You KNOW I had to take this story to Mortis!!
> 
> In addition to a thinly-veiled pro-choice propaganda I must admit I also wrote this as basically a love letter to the things I love best about The Clone Wars. Even if you have no interest in the show in general, you really owe it to yourself to watch the Mortis arc for some of the most utterly bananas shit in the entire Star Wars canon.


	15. Chapter 15

The walk across the throne room to the other hall was a long and nervous one, spent in uncomfortable silence. Finally they emerged into a room with a huge stained glass window portraying an old man with a pale woman in a green dress on one side of him and a red-eyed man in black on the other, installed in one wall. In that room was a woman deep in concentration, using both hands to maintain some sort of Force containment field on an old man Rey and Kylo both immediately recognized. 

“Oh god,” Rey said. “His face.”

“It’s the baby from the dream, the horror baby,” Kylo agreed, his voice haunted.

“Ah. You’re familiar with Emperor Palpatine already.” Anakin sounded weary.

“That’s the _Emperor_?” Rey squeaked. “The _horror baby_?”

The Emperor, from within his containment bubble, opened his eyes and began to chuckle, then to cackle. “Yes, child. We’ve met. All of us. _Intimately_,” he said, leering at Rey. She took an involuntary step back.

“It’s been him, then,” Kylo said. “He’s been giving me the nightmares, as you thought.”

“And giving Skywalker baby after prodigious Skywalker baby to your lover, ungrateful vessel that she is,” Palpatine completed the thought. Rey saw the woman who was holding the containment field grimace. 

“The done thing these days is to ask,” Rey pointed out, trying to put on a brave face. 

“Any sensible woman would consider it an honor. Ask Shmi here,” he gestured at the woman. “She accepted the seed the Force planted in her loins with gratitude. With _joy_.”

“Shmi? This is Anakin’s mother?” Kylo asked, wonder in his voice.

“I am,” she said, sweat beading on her brow.

“The containment field requires intense concentration,” Anakin said. “Mom has a hard time doing much other than keeping it up, these days.” 

“He’s getting stronger,” she said.

Sudden insight arose in Rey’s mind. “He’s drawing energy from the First Order.” 

“He derives strength from others’ subjugation and pain,” Anakin said with a nod. “It’s the nature of his relationship with the dark side. It’s why he’s so powerful, so difficult to beat - he embodies a positive feedback loop. The more damage that’s done, the more he can do, and the ability to do that damage sustains him.” 

“I thought you killed him,” Kylo said.

“Nobody’s ever really gone,” Shmi said absently.

“But enough of these pleasantries,” said Palpatine. “You’ve come, and I tire of waiting here for the galaxy to be ready for me again.” He slashed at the air with a hand and the containment bubble exploded, blasting Shmi backwards into a wall. Anakin ran to tend to her. “We all feel it. Even the Last Jedi is dabbling in the Dark. The heir to the Skywalker inheritance has reneged on his responsibilities to the line, and the Force is crying out for something, anything to fill the vacuum. Once again, there is power, wild and savage, running free in the currents of the Force. And I see in this room two of the few living things equipped to wield it - but they shrink away like younglings at the thought.”

With no warning, he turned into a huge, black winged beast. The beast grabbed Rey in its talons, and carried her off, shattering the stained glass window to exit.

#

At first, Rey struggled to get away, but as they left the building and gained altitude, she decided it was probably better not to be dropped. She watched with interest as the landscape changed below her; It had never really occurred to Rey to wonder what it might be like to fly without a ship, and she found it pleasant, present company notwithstanding. The creature flew them past the mountain range they’d navigated with Anakin on the previous day into a more desert-like area which featured a circular stone building. They began to spiral down towards it, then flew in through the door, which was wide and tall enough to accommodate them easily. The building was a single large square room, its floor fine, sandy dirt, its walls stone, with tall, narrow rectangular windows filled with yellow glass. They threw a pattern of stripes across the floor.

The creature set Rey down surprisingly gently, and then Rey blinked and it was no longer the creature. 

“I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot, my dear.” 

Rey paused. He did seem kinder, more in control - but she knew it was probably a trick. “Okay,” she said tentatively. “I mean, I know we did. I’ve lost track of how many abortions I’ve had because of you, you know.”

“That isn’t quite what I meant,” he said, making a concerned face. “I meant just now. We’d never met before, and I usually tend to be a bit less, well, dramatic. Anyone who knew me in life can tell you. I was a politician, a _popular_ politician, not some raving maniac. It’s just, these Skywalkers…” He trailed off.

“They’re mental,” Rey concurred. “The whole family, as far as I can tell.”

“They have their uses,” the Emperor hastened to point out. “Nobody can deny that. Their power in the Force is something to behold. Prodigious - sometimes dazzling. You should have _seen_ young Anakin in his prime. But they can be, well,” he left the sentence hanging again, inviting her to finish the thought.

“A _lot_, sometimes.” 

“And of course there’s no accounting for taste,” he continued with a sly sidelong glance, “but I think that Kylo Ren may be the most infuriating of any of them. Probably down to inferior genetics on his father’s side, a shame, but what can you do. And you, patient thing, have been traveling with him for how long? Isn’t it time to put the burden down?”

“Once we’ve convinced you to stop meddling in our affairs, absolutely.” 

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know why you see it as meddling, Rey. It’s the sincerest compliment I can pay, and the greatest gift I can give. Imagine, birthing the next great ruler the galaxy will see! When I gifted Shmi with Anakin’s spark so many years ago, my ambitions for him were limited; I’ll admit, I was selfish, and wanted an apprentice who would never  _quite_ exceed my power. And the mother, I chose accordingly: a woman gifted with a natural sensitivity for some aspects of the Force, a suitable vessel for the child I hoped she would bear, but no training, and no reason she’d attract any attention. Who would believe a slave who found herself with child with no instigating contact? It worked…to a point.”

“But he did end up exceeding your power, didn’t he? Anakin beat you.” 

“He was _unstable_,” he snapped, his eyes flashing dangerously. Then his tone returned to normal. “Unpredictable. Too emotional. I couldn’t take him in hand the way he needed. And neither could the Jedi.”

“I thought the dark side relies on emotions. I’ve heard that’s where the power of the dark comes from.”

“Some emotions, yes. Rage, hate, fear: these are the emotions on which our power thrives. Emotions you know well, young Rey, I know. I’ve felt them wash over you even since you arrived, felt you push them out of the way. You could be magnificent if you only embraced them instead of fleeing them - but of course that’s up to you. But Anakin’s heart was confused, conflicted. I believe his mother’s lack of Force training influenced his development. He never had the control to marshal his strength effectively.”

“Someone else recently said a similar thing to me about Kylo,” Rey mused. 

“Similar situation,” he said, shaking his head. “Tragic. But now that I’m no longer among the living, my ambition for the offspring I can create with the Force is unbounded. No longer do I need to consider safeguarding my own power. You could bear the next emperor - an emperor to rule the entire known galaxy, extend his power into the Unknown Regions and beyond. You could create that power inside you, nurture it in your growing child. As this child of destiny came into his strength, you would be there, by his side, shaping his thoughts, his heart.”

Rey had to admit, there was appeal to the image. Now that she understood the Emperor’s intentions, well - she didn’t think there was anything savory or salutary about them, but at least she was able to see why he’d done what he’d done. Not the imperial ambitions, necessarily, but the unique opportunity to parent without compromise on anything. Rey had accepted so many compromises. 

He took her silence as an invitation to continue. “I know you’ve yearned for a family. Why cast about to find one, taking up with these pathetic rebels or unpredictable, overdramatic Skywalkers? Why not create your own, with my help? This child could be everything to you. Your search would be over, and you could start building for the future. And that deep attachment, that fierce protectiveness, could fuel your relationship with the Force.”

More than anything, this resonated with Rey. Since her time on Dathomir Rey had felt the strength that the Nightsisters drew from their familial attachments to one another and their protectiveness of their culture.

“What do you mean by ‘create your own,’ though?” Rey asked. “Doesn’t Kylo Ren need to be involved?”

“Oh, not necessarily,” he said airily, with a wave of his hand. “I needed his genetic information when I didn’t have your cooperation. Takes two to counter-bore waltz, you know. But if you were to want to use your _own_ womb - well, for obvious reasons I’ve never had the wherewithal to try it, human anatomy being what it is, but I gather it’s possible to incubate one’s own clone with the Force.”

Rey imagined a daughter who looked just like her. A daughter she could raise in the way she  _knew_ she had needed, a daughter who could know the Force intimately from her first steps, her first words, who could step into the power she’d been born with, skipping past the hardscrabble childhood, the starvation, the heat of Jakku, the desperate loneliness, the struggle to survive. A daughter who’d be by her side, who could learn from Rey and from the Resistance and from the Nightsisters and from the ancient Jedi texts. Rey imagined what she could have been, if her parents hadn’t been such drastically unfit guardians, if she’d grown up in a place with more resources. And she thought, I could give this person to the galaxy. 

“What do I do?”

#

Palpatine’s grin spread across his face, too slowly, like a dreadnought crossing in front of a sun. “Meditate with me, child,” he said, and they sat.

Rey didn’t hear his voice in her head, but she felt his presence, oily and cold. She gritted her teeth. It was worth it.  It had to be.  She had to learn what he knew. She could start a family all on her own. No partners, no obligations, nobody to hold her back or argue with her about what she was doing right or wrong, no wildcard Skywalkers involved. Rey would know what her clone needed in a parent. She’d never have to wonder, what happened here? Why is this child this way? She’d never be Shmi, or Leia, wondering, did I create the next dark lord? Did I choose to bear that - that abomination? Because a clone of Rey, raised by Rey, loved and cherished, trained and shaped to use her power for good - she would not become that. That wouldn’t happen. It didn’t matter if a Sith Lord’s teaching enabled her conception. It wouldn’t change a thing.

“What are you doing,” Rey asked out loud, maintaining her stance, eyes closed.

“Taking the lay of the land,” Palpatine hissed. “Good intentions, moral certitude, insufficient training. The only flavor of Jedi they’re turning out anymore, it seems.” 

“That’s what happens when you massacre most of them.”

“I know,” he said, satisfaction spreading into his voice like a fungus.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a real piece of work, Palpatine?”

“Nobody alive.” She could hear in his voice his creepy rictus of a smile. “And yet, here you are.”

“Here I am,” she said, struggling to maintain her focus on meditation. They sat in silence for a few minutes.

She felt a sudden jolt in her mind, and her eyes flew open. It reminded her of the sudden jerk into consciousness she sometimes experienced just as she was dropping off to sleep. “What was _that_,” she gasped. 

“Nothing to worry about,” he growled. “Laying some groundwork.” 

“It didn’t _feel_ like nothing to worry about,” she said, moving to get up, her eyes narrowed.

“Sit down,” he snapped, and she found herself sitting involuntarily. 

“No,” she said, struggling to stand and failing. “This isn’t right. You’re doing something I didn’t agree to, and I want you to tell me what it is. _Now_.”

He refused to release her, and didn’t respond. Rey felt her temper reach a boiling point, and when she looked down, she saw that electricity was crackling between her fingers. “What have you done?” she screamed at him, turning the lightning on him without a thought. 

“Improvements,” he cackled as the Force lightning hit his body. Rey felt herself released from his hold and scrambled to her feet, the lightning crackling as she did so. She drew and ignited her lightsaber and rounded on Palpatine, who sat, cackling wildly, still sparking with visible electricity. 

At the same instant, a huge white beast, the opposite-color twin of the one Palpatine had turned into when he’d abducted her, flapped in through the building’s single, huge door with Anakin in one talon and Kylo in the other. She could see the expressions on their faces well enough to be absolutely certain they’d just seen her attack the Emperor with Force lightning.

#

The white beast set the two men down and turned into a sorrowful, disappointed Shmi Skywalker. She shot Rey a look of reproach, then transformed back and flew away. Kylo and Anakin drew their lightsabers and advanced, clearly not certain where to direct the attack, waiting for a cue.

“Well?” Palpatine hissed at them. “You’re too late. She’s mine.”

“I am _not_,” she growled, running at him with her saber. 

To her surprise, she found herself unable to move against him. She froze, faltered, tried again. “_Mine_,” Palpatine emphasized, and she felt her stance pivot to challenge Kylo, and by extension, Anakin. “_Mine_!” he shrieked. And fury suddenly filled Rey’s heart.

Every uncharitable thought she’d ever had about Kylo Ren came rushing to mind at once. How  _dare_ this overgrown  _boy_ who’d had everything she’d ever dreamt of handed to him and thrown it away like garbage try to take this from her? The Jedi training, the family who cared about him, the secret knowledge from powerful mentors. None of it was anything Rey had ever been offered, or if it had, it was conditional, and snatched away again before it really had a chance to take root. Kylo had been born with the “Chosen One” status that accrued by birth to every member of the Skywalker line, and he’d thrown his advantages away in spectacular fashion.  _She_ would have been grateful.  _She_ would have studied hard, honored her parents and her opportunities, resisted temptation. But she’d never gotten an opening. She’d always been at the margins, fit in around other concerns, left to fend for herself.

And finally, _finally_, it was Rey’s turn for a taste of a little secret knowledge of her own and of course one of the blasted Skywalkers was there - with family backup, no less, how typical - to get in the way. The presumption boggled the mind. She was  _so close_ to the family she’d wanted to start, and to being able to start it whenever she wanted, without anyone’s permission or participation but her own, after so many months of so little control over her reproductive capacities, and yet, as always, Kylo Ren was interrupting her at a key moment, taking away her choices and chances and making it all about himself, as usual, just like he’d acted as though their shared struggle had equal stakes for them - as if a few scary dreams could compete with the stark reality of involuntary pregnancy after involuntary pregnancy. 

And now, she was at a crossroads, about to learn a skill that would make her control over her reproductive capacity total. She could feel this incredible potential slipping away with each passing second and she wanted to scream. Once again, Rey was going to miss out. And for once, she had a clear opening to take her revenge on the man responsible. She bared her teeth in a snarl. It was all the warning they got.

Rey struck out with her saber, taking both Kylo and Anakin on at once with no hesitation. Why would she hesitate? She knew every one of Kylo’s tricks and traps as if they were her own, and could exploit what she’d learned of him in their many sparring sessions to get ahead of him. And Anakin was fast, but she was certain she was faster. Both men were clearly surprised, and were both a split second too slow to block. Anakin stumbled back and Kylo’s blade was caught at an awkward angle for him.

Rey Force pushed Anakin out of the way a few meters and focused on Kylo for a moment, taking advantage of his discomfiture to press her advantage, getting in swing after swing as he blocked, losing ground with each clash. In no time at all she had him backed against a wall, his lightsaber raised in defense, hers pushing it back closer and closer to his body. She could see the sweat beading on his forehead. She grinned a predatory grin. His eyes telegraphed real fear and Rey couldn’t get enough of it. “Rey,” he murmured, almost inaudibly, his gaze darting over at the Emperor. “Your eyes - ”

But then Anakin was behind her, and she felt his stealthy approach in the Force, and whirled to her right with her saber outstretched to meet his. The hum of their impact rang through the room. And suddenly the battle got somewhat more complex.

Rey was no stranger to unfair fights. Two-on-one was a situation she’d been in more times than she could count, starting from a very young age; she knew how to divide her attention, how to find spaces in the battle to distract one opponent or the other. She wished she had a saberstaff, but she knew her blade would do. 

Meanwhile, it was clear Anakin and Kylo had never fought on the same side before, as they tended to get in each other’s way, amateurishly tripping on one another’s feet as they both attempted to occupy the same space.  _Typical Skywalkers, both out for glory,_ she thought to herself. Their faces grim, they made attempt after attempt to get hits in on Rey, but neither could get close, and neither seemed fully committed to the battle - as if they weren’t certain they wanted to be fighting her at all. 

Rey, on the other hand, had no such qualms. She fought with every iota of conviction she had. This was going to end with her standing over the bodies of one dead Skywalker scion and one - well, whatever was going to happen to Anakin, ghost or spirit or god that he was. She knew it with utter certainty and the bloodlust sang in her heart. Over the melee, Rey could hear the Emperor’s laughter.

After a minute of combat, Rey noticed that Kylo and Anakin had gotten out of one another’s way and started to work together. This was an unwelcome development, as they were both strong enough in the Force that their efforts would be greater than the sum of their parts if she gave them enough time to sync their fighting styles up. Rey knew time wasn’t on her side. 

She let them back her up until she was a few feet from a corner, then ducked and spun, swinging her saber wide, catching Anakin off guard and ducking past him to his right. Then she hit him with Force lightning with her left hand, immobilizing him as she continued to block Kylo with the sword in her right, now at a new angle. She heard Palpatine make some sort of incoherent, delighted sound as Anakin shook with the electrical current. In the Force she felt him lose consciousness. The corners of her mouth curled up, not enough to be called a smile.

She knew she had the energy to take Kylo Ren out if he didn’t have anyone to back him up. And it was clearly legible on his face that he knew it as well as she did. She came on stronger than ever, slashing back and forth with all the force she could muster, hitting him like he was a bully on the streets of Niima outpost who’d just tried to steal her portions. It was all he could do to keep blocking. She backed him across the room in a heartbeat. 

His back was against the wall. Their sabers were crossed, hissing together. Rey pulled hers back to strike again.

Kylo got a faraway look on his face, brought his saber to center, and turned it off. He closed his eyes. 

Rey swung wide and fast, with no hesitation, realizing in the moment that this was it: she was about to strike the blow that killed Kylo Ren.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple more chapters and an epilogue left. Sorry for the cliffhanger...jk not sorry >:D


	16. Chapter 16

In the moment, time slowed down for Rey, and every detail of every move she made was crystal clear.

She felt the saber slice through Kylo’s jacket. His sweater. His thin linen shirt. His skin. He felt him gasp as she hit subcutaneous fat, burned through muscle and fascia, her saber cauterizing the tissue as she went. And then the saber hit bone.

It was the same rib she’d healed herself, not so many weeks ago. She felt her own power still on it. And her lightsaber hitting this tender spot, this bit of Kylo she’d thought about and felt guilty about and eventually labored over, felt like a bucket of cold water had just been dumped over her head.

She sucked in a huge breath and threw her saber as far from herself as she could, maintaining control of it in the Force just in case. It spun away from her, its blade still on, sliding across the floor like a startled skittermouse.

“Ben, oh stars, I’m so sorry,” she gasped, closing the distance between them. He was crumpling in pain and she caught him, supporting his weight. “I’m so sorry, please, please be okay,” she murmured, lying him down gently, preparing to try to heal what damage she could. “I didn’t mean it, oh gods, I didn’t mean it.”

Tears sprang to Rey’s eyes as she tried in vain to fix the damage. Kylo was breathing normally, if shallowly, but his skin was cool and clammy. Rey could hear her heart in her ears. And she could hear the Emperor begin to draw in a breath to speak. She knew she had a split-second chance, and she took it.

She acted on instinct, calling her still-ignited lightsaber back to her on a circuitous vector, knowing that if she thought for even a moment about what she was attempting that it couldn’t possibly work.

She heard a thud behind her and lifted her left hand to catch the saber as it whizzed in her direction from behind.

Only then did she turn to see the Emperor’s head and shoulders, neatly sundered from the rest of his torso, where they’d hit the ground. Just as she’d hoped.

Rey sagged in relief.

#

She surveyed the scene wearily. Anakin lay against a wall, unconscious, on his side. He was breathing normally, and might have been beginning to stir. Kylo was breathing rapidly near another wall, perhaps in shock, a nasty burn marring his side. Then of course there was the Emperor, cleanly bisected, near the center of the room.

“Well. I’ve karked this all up magnificently, haven’t I,” she muttered. “Guess I’d better try and get Anakin moving, maybe he can help me with Kylo.” All she wanted to do in the world was lie down and rest, but she wasn’t sure if one or both of them needed urgent medical attention. Nor did she have any idea what sort of medical attention was available on this weird rock of a Force planet, anyway.

Before she managed to wake Anakin, though, the white winged beast flew back in through the huge double doors. And suddenly, again, the beast was Shmi Skywalker.

“You killed him,” she observed to Rey.

“So it would seem,” Rey agreed tentatively.

“He possessed you.”

“He did.” Rey paused. “I think.” Rey thought a moment. “Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe that was just me.”

“What did he use to get to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“His way is to find a foothold in your mind. A fear or a hope. Something you can’t stand to lose, or want so badly you’ll do anything to get it. He can’t get to you from nothing; he finds a gap in your defenses and pries it open.”

“Attachments,” Rey said grimly.

“There’s a reason the Jedi were so fixated on minimizing them. They are easy to exploit.”

“But they aren’t - you can’t _really_ avoid them, right? Humans can’t.”

“Not that I’ve ever seen.” Shmi gave her a gentle smile. “I wouldn’t want to. I am no Jedi, though. So, what was yours? Your love for my great-grandson?”

Rey burst out laughing. “Hardly. I barely _like_ the guy.” Shmi raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know. It’s complicated. But no. I - well, if you must know. He told me he could tell me how to create a baby in my womb with the Force. Like he did to you, he said, but for myself. So I could wait until I was ready to start a family, and then do it on my own.”

“Like _he_ did to _me_? Oh, that sleemo.”

“Didn’t he? That’s - I mean, numerous people have – and _he_ said - oh. _Ohhh_.” Rey’s conception about who Shmi Skywalker was and what had landed her on this Force nexus had just flipped on its head.

Shmi gave a bitter laugh. “I guess I shouldn’t expect you to have questioned the _numerous_ people who believed that liar without hesitation, or be surprised to find you among them yourself. I've spent a life and more working at being easy to underestimate. But Rey, there was only ever one person on this Force nexus who’d willed life into being with the Force without using anyone else’s genetic material to do it, only one person who could claim to have the means to teach you how - and it was not Sheev Palpatine.”

Rey’s eyes grew wide in astonishment. “_You_ made Anakin, by yourself? How? Who taught you?”

“Oh, a mere slave from a desert world couldn’t possibly have figured it out on her own? Rey.”

“No, I mean, just - well, how _did_ you figure it out?” Rey spluttered. “I never just ‘figured out’ anything with the Force.”

“You didn’t. Is that so.” The sarcasm was thick enough to choke. Shmi had seemed so sweet and serious before, and Rey liked seeing this side of her, the side that, if nothing else, had clearly had the day-to-day experience of being Anakin Skywalker’s mother for long enough to leave a mark.

“I mean, nothing like _that_. Nothing _complicated_.”

“I was by myself and I had a lot of time on my hands. It was illegal on Tatooine at the time for me to learn to read or write; if they found me trying it, I’d be publicly whipped on the first offense, sold into hard labor or worse on the second. I discovered meditation and filled any waking moment I had free with it. And over the years, I communed more and more deeply with the Living Force. I’m sure you’d have done the same if you hadn’t had access to reading material.”

“Amazing,” Rey breathed.

“It taught me many lessons: to hide in plain sight, to shield my thoughts, to detect other Force users. And once, after someone in Jabba’s entourage violated me, it taught me to heal the damage.” She paused a moment, clearly remembering a difficult time. “Once I knew I could end life inside me, as I know you learned on Dathomir, the leap to creating it was short. You would have noticed it yourself, eventually, I’m sure. You’re a resourceful girl.”

“So the emperor didn’t - ?”

“He had nothing to do with Ani’s conception, though once he figured out I’d done it by myself it probably gave him some ideas that he eventually used on you, I’m sorry to say. One of the many things that made Palpatine dangerous was his eagerness to experiment. Ani and I could feel him doing something - unusual, in the Force, in the past year or so. We tried to contain him, but it wasn’t effective because we didn’t know exactly what he was up to. But I’m reasonably sure you were a _new_ sort of experiment. And then of course when he got it right, he rewrote history to make it seem as though he'd been meddling this way all along. All very typical behavior for him, I gather.”

“I’m sure he would have thought I should consider that an honor,” Rey said, rolling her eyes. “Do you know when he began to groom Anakin as his apprentice? Was it while he was still a child on Tatooine?” Rey thought of Kylo Ren, in mental contact with Snoke as an isolated boy, and had to wonder.

“As far as I could tell, he didn’t know Ani existed until the Jedi took him to Coruscant. Of course then he felt Ani’s strength in the Force. But anyone could have.”

“I’m sure. Even his ghost is, well.”

“Like looking right at the suns.” Shmi smiled wistfully. “Always was. Imagine how I felt, pregnant with this brilliant, brilliant boy. Children followed me down the street. Vendors found themselves giving me their merchandise free of charge. The very flowers turned to watch me walk, those nine months.”

“I’m so sorry,” Rey whispered, an unexpected sob catching in her throat. “You must have thought he was going to save the galaxy. I’m so sorry his fate found the place for him that it did, Shmi.”

Tears danced in Shmi’s eyes. “It’s the risk you take when you bring a new life into being, Rey. Always remember that. Even a sun is just - ”

Rey thought of Starkiller Base and swallowed hard. “Just ammunition, in the wrong hands. But I’m so sorry. He deserved better.”

“Many do.” Shmi clasped both her hands around Rey’s. “I won’t teach you to create life within yourself. Perhaps you will discover a way to do it differently. Perhaps I did the wrong thing with Ani, and that was what bent his arc so sideways.”

“How are you so sure I can figure it out on my own?”

“I’m not. But if you don’t, you don’t. You’ll find another way. The conventional way to get pregnant isn’t so bad, I hear.”

Rey blushed. “That may be. But I’d rather know I had everything I needed within me.”

“I know. You do.”

#

“Mom?” Anakin’s voice said. “Rey? Oh, good,” he struggled to get to his feet. “You’re back to normal.” He looked around. “Wow, did _you_ do that to Palpatine?”

“Yes,” Rey said, annoyed at the implication that anyone else might've.

“Nice work,” he said, sounding impressed. “You must be a natural at shielding, to have caught him off his guard. But you better revive your boyfriend here and get back to your ship. Once one of the three Force guardians dies on Mortis, things seem to fall apart pretty fast.”

“I’m going to need help,” Rey said, suddenly overcome with guilt that she had been chatting with Shmi instead of tending to him. “I think he’s in shock.” The three of them headed toward Kylo to see what they could do.

“You stab him?” Anakin asked, his tone too casual for the allegation.

“Something like that,” Rey said, embarrassed, as they gathered in a clump around Kylo where he lay.

“It’s okay,” he replied, examining the wound. “This place seems to be all about giving avowed lightsiders a taste of the Sith side of things. The second I saw you and Kylo landed here I was sure I’d see you with those golden eyes once before you made it off.”

“Golden eyes?” Rey asked, confused. “Kylo mentioned something to me about my eyes, but I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.”

“Yeah, the eyes of true Sith turn gold - but here on Mortis, I wouldn’t read too much into it.” He held his hand over Kylo’s side, taking the measure of the wound. “Mom, I think you’ll be the best at this sort of injury.”

“Mm,” Shmi hummed over the burn. “It’ll scar. But he’ll be fine.” She put her left hand over his heart and her right over the injury, and Rey could feel her gathering power around herself and then smoothing it in sheets over her great-grandson’s body. Within a few minutes the burn had turned into a broad white mark on his torso and his color and breathing looked better. His eyelashes began to flutter open.

“He’ll need to sleep soon, and he’ll sleep for a while,” Shmi said. “But he should wake up feeling fine.”

“Can we get them back to their ship?”

“I can fly them back.”

“Rey?” Kylo said weakly.

“It’s okay, Kylo. I’m sorry. You’re okay now, no thanks to me.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he. The Emperor, you got him.”

“Yeah, I got him.”

“I knew you could,” he murmured, drifting off again.

“Touching,” Anakin said. “Mom?”

“Off we go,” she said, transforming and picking Rey and Kylo up in her talons. Kylo hung limply in her grasp. Rey could hardly bear to look over at him.

#

The flight was uneventful, but Anakin was right; the Force nexus formerly known as Mortis had become unstable once one of the triad of personalities inhabiting it had been removed. Rey could see rocks crumbling out of the sky, and the wind was starting to pick up, blowing erratically, hot then cold, in every direction. Shmi managed to provide a fairly smooth ride under the circumstances, but Rey worried it might be a touchy takeoff for the _Needle_.

Ah, well. She’d have to make it work. And it was looking like she might have to do it on her own. Despite the bracing wind, Kylo barely looked conscious.

Within a few minutes Shmi was touching down where they’d left the ship. The landing was gentle, not too easy to manage given she had to negotiate dropping Rey without jostling Kylo, whom she placed in a neat heap on the ground. Somehow Anakin was waiting there.

“How’d you get here?” Rey asked him over the din of the collapsing nexus.

Anakin shrugged. “Do you think you can take off?”

“Probably.” She shrugged back. “I’ll have to, won’t I.”

“I was going to offer to help, but I’m really not sure what would happen if I tried to go with you.”

The idea felt wrong to Rey. “No, I don’t think so. I think I’ll manage.”

“Suit yourself.” He gave her a hug. “Hey, don’t be a stranger, okay? It’s been fun showing up in your meditations.”

“As long as you don’t mind me bothering you, I’m always up for company,” Rey said with a smile. “Can you help me get him into the ship?”

Anakin gestured at Kylo and his body rose off the ground. Rey opened up the ship and lowered the ramp, and Anakin strode on. “Nice ride,” he shouted down. “His, I assume.”

“How’d you guess,” she confirmed. “His bedroom is the third door on the right. I want to say goodbye to your mom.”

She turned to Shmi, who smiled encouragingly. “It was nice to meet you, Rey.”

“More than nice,” Rey said. “I can’t tell you what it’s meant to me to meet you. I wish we’d gotten to spend more time getting to know one another.”

“Nobody’s ever really gone,” Shmi said gently. “I’m sure we’ll meet again if the Force wills it.”

“I hope so. Thanks.”

“May the Force be with you, young Rey,” Shmi said, hugging her tightly.

Rey was shocked to feel tears running down her face. “And also with you,” she replied, shutting her eyes tightly while her face was hidden in the hug to try to stop herself from crying.

Anakin came back down on the ramp. “He’s all situated,” he said, politely declining to mention the fact that Rey was swiping tears off her face with the back of her hand. “Good luck. You may have a calm minute up there, best take advantage. Sure you don’t want me to try and pilot you off?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. Thanks for the offer, and for everything else. I’ll see you around.”

Rey ran up the ramp, her eyes still watering, and shut it tight.

She flexed her arms and cracked her knuckles in front of her as she settled herself into the pilot’s seat. “Here goes nothing,” she said. “Setting in a course for Mustafar.”

There was a little turbulence near the ground, but nothing as bad as Rey’d been expecting. As the nexus disappeared below her, Rey cheered. Then, out of nowhere, a strong and sustained stream of wind blew the ship alarmingly off course, dangerously close to the area where a number of floating rocks were in the process of disintegrating onto the mountains below.

“Kriff!” Rey barked, banking hard to the left. A chunk of rock bounced off the ship but didn’t seem to do any real damage. Rey’s worry, though, was that even another small gust in the wrong direction could take them into the in-atmosphere equivalent of an asteroid field.

She accelerated as fast as the engine could go in the opposite direction from the floating rocks, reaching for the Force to try to predict the currents of the wind, spinning and weaving through them as best she could while trying to gain altitude. She felt as though her ship were under attack by the very atmosphere of this strange, otherworldly place.

With a final halfhearted gust, the Force nexus seemed to give up. Either that or Rey had hit whatever altitude threshold she needed to achieve escape velocity. She wasn’t about to nitpick. She slammed her palm on the button to jump the second she was sure it was safe to enter hyperspace. She’d never been so happy to see starlines.

Rey wasn’t sure returning to Mustafar was the right move. They were still limping along with an antique hyperdrive, and getting to Mustafar would mean crossing half the galaxy. But making the trip out to the Telos system didn’t make any sense now that they’d solved their problem. The quest was complete. Heading back through the Core seemed to be the best plan to default to. They could find another mechanic on the way if they needed to, or just white knuckle it to Mustafar and let Kylo’s people deal with it there. She almost wanted to laugh, thinking of some posh First Order mechanic droid opening up the hyperdrive chassis and shutting down in despair.

The departure attended to, Rey knew the next order of business was to check on Kylo.

#

His bedroom door slid open silently. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully enough. His breaths were soft and even, and the wound, visible where her lightsaber had burned away his clothes, appeared to be little more than a broad white scar. But clearly, he still needed to sleep off the healing. She put a hand on his forehead to check his temperature. He felt normal.

As she took her hand away, he reached up and grabbed her wrist. “Stay,” he murmured. “You feel good.” Rey went to sit down in the chair by the desk, but he budged over and patted the bed. “Please,” he said simply. He hadn’t opened his eyes.

Rey shrugged and got into bed, snuggling her torso against his shoulder. She threw an arm over his chest and he made a contented hum. She could feel him slip back into deeper sleep, immersed in utter, total calm. Rey didn’t feel tired, but she felt her eyelids drooping anyway, so intensely relaxed was his presence in the Force.

Rey was humbled by the depth of his trust. She still felt overcome by guilt that the Emperor had whipped her into a rage so easily, and that when the time had come to direct that rage she’d not been able to stop herself from directing it at him. She wasn’t sure what exactly she felt for Kylo Ren, but it certainly wasn’t hate or anger.

She planted a light little kiss where his neck met his jawline. He didn’t stir. Rey let herself slip off into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK! Well! I probably will not post on Thursday as it's a holiday in the USA and I have people coming. But after this, there's one more chapter and then a fairly brief epilogue.


	17. Chapter 17

When she woke up, he was already awake, and he’d turned towards her. His eyes were on hers. He looked alert and focused.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” she replied through a yawn, her voice scratchy with sleep. “How long was I out?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Where are we headed?”

“I set our course back to Mustafar. Straight shot on the Hydian Way.”

“Back to real life.”

“Yeah.”

They lay there looking at each other for a few minutes.

“Do you want to go back?” he asked.

“To the Resistance, you mean?” He nodded. “Yeah, I do. I miss my friends and I’m sure they’re worried. I haven’t checked in for weeks and weeks. Do you?”

“What do you think?” he asked bitterly.

“There’s not much for you in the First Order these days. Not that there really ever was.” She thought back to the miserable, conflicted young man who’d tried to torture her for information. She suppressed a blush thinking back to how beautiful she’d found him then, even as her mind had been clouded with terror. “You’ve never really had a place with them, have you, even when Snoke was around.”

“Nobody had a place when Snoke was around. He made it his job to make everyone under him sure he’d kill them the next time they kriffed something up. And he followed through often enough that everyone believed it.”

She put a hand on his cheek, caressing gently. “As management strategies go - well, I’ve experienced it myself, when I was young, and it doesn’t make for the most cheerful work environment.”

He grimaced. “Without him, it’s clubby and bureaucratic, and I’m not in the club. They’ve got no use for me except to put on propaganda posters and send to planets to terrorize rebellions. You know what I thought I’d be able to do as Supreme Leader. But it was all a mirage. Nobody cares what I think about how to lead.”

“What would you do instead, if you could do anything at all with your life?”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

He made a thoughtful face for just a little too long, then said, completely deadpan, “I think I’d have sex with you until I dropped dead from exhaustion.”

“Aren’t _we_ smooth,” Rey said with a surprised laugh. “Very flattering. But we couldn’t possibly, you’re injured.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” he said, trying to spring to his feet to demonstrate how hale and hearty he was and failing.

“You demonstrably aren’t. Be patient,” she said, getting up with ease. “You should have some water. Stay here, I’ll get it.”

“Water sounds _incredible_,” he said, seemingly realizing in that moment that it did.

When she came back with water, he’d managed to maneuver himself into a sitting position. “I’m really just fine,” he asserted. “I’ve had worse. Hells, I’ve had worse from _you_.”

“Not on a Force nexus. You don’t know what kind of weird magic was at play there. I would be cautious with this recovery. And I think you’re still a little ragged from whatever it was that cursed you on Dathomir, too.”

“Maybe so,” he said.

“Anyway,” she continued, “we’ll be in hyperspace for a good long time, assuming we don’t run into any more trouble at platform swaps and this hacked-together hyperdrive holds out, which I think it will. There’s no rush to do anything. Just take it easy, move slowly, don’t overexert yourself.” Suddenly, something occurred to Rey which she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten. “Wait, though - aren’t we low on food? We’ll need to stop to resupply. I think this hyperdrive will be fine as long as we can just stay in hyperspace - it’s getting into and out of hyperspace that I’m worried about.”

“Oh, no, it’s all right,” Kylo said with a wave of his hand. “Of course I prefer fresh things, but I’ve got a deep refrigeration unit in the cargo bay. We should be fine for six standard months.”

Rey’s mouth dropped open. Six standard _months_ of food had been cached away on this ship and she hadn’t even known? “That is…wow. What’s in it?”

“Little of everything,” he shrugged. “The first thing Han Solo bought for the _Falcon _when he won it and had a few credits on hand was a deep fridge. Doesn’t matter how fancy you fly if the first time you crash someplace remote you starve before you can fix your ship.”

It occurred to Rey that while Han Solo’s son had never been hungry, Han Solo himself almost certainly had, and it had given him at least one very sensible idea. “Excellent policy to have, I guess. And convenient for us.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “Wish we had some more of those apples, though.”

“Can I go see? Do you think you can get up and show me?”

“Sure.”

She helped him up, and they made their way slowly down to the cargo bay where Kylo pointed out the deep refrigeration unit. It was a huge, chest-shaped box she’d noticed before because of the whirring noise its compressor made, but she’d assumed it was part of the ship’s mechanical systems, perhaps a climate control unit. She’d never thought maybe there was a doomsday cache of food inside. She lifted the lid like a child opening a long-anticipated life day gift.

“Woooow,” she whispered reverently, drawing the word out. “I’ve never seen so much food in one place like this before!”

“Sure you have,” Kylo said nonchalantly. “Try ‘any market you could name’.”

“You know what I mean,” she scoffed, punching him playfully on the arm, taking care to be gentle. “I said ‘like this’. All the food belonging to one person, just sitting on their ship like - like a possession.” She noticed that he was studying her soberly as she rhapsodized about his emergency supplies. “What?”

“I was just thinking how many things we both take for granted that are so foreign to the other,” he replied. “What different worlds we’re from.”

“Well, sure,” she said. “But everyone’s from a different world.”

“I suppose.”

They stood quietly for a moment, listening to the crackle and hum of the compressor, looking at the treasure trove of food. Finally Rey shut the lid. “So do you think you can make it back up the stairs?”

#

A few quiet days in hyperspace and Rey privately concluded Kylo Ren was going to be fine. He was sleeping well, and seemed to be regaining his strength and energy.

Which was great, because Rey _needed_ to spar. Her connection to the Force felt jangled and confused since they’d left the Force nexus, and the tension of combat had always been the way back to clarifying it for her before. Moreover, Rey needed to feel she was back in control, and had shaken off whatever of the Emperor’s influence had compelled her when she’d come close to killing Kylo.

Rey also privately admitted in her deepest heart of hearts that she wouldn’t mind a repeat of what had transpired the last time they’d sparred, either. Maybe he’d last longer than fifteen seconds this time.

But that was the trick. Asking him to spar felt as though it had become an implicit invitation to more, and she was uncharacteristically shy about making that kind of open proposition, especially when the last time they’d drawn lightsabers on one another, she’d been so close to striking a killing blow against him she could still feel the bloodlust in her veins, and hear the lightsaber burning its way through his layers of clothing in her dreams. She didn’t know how any of this would feel to him, and could only guess at how it would feel to her.

Which meant the suspense was killing her.

Luckily, it seemed Kylo was feeling similar tension, and nervously approached her over breakfast as they were crossing into the Inner Rim, a few days after their journey began.

“So, I know it’s probably weird to want to fight you again after, well. Probably I should see a mind healer at some point, figure out these self-destructive tendencies. But, that said…”

“It’d feel like we were closing the loop on it,” Rey interrupted.

“Yes.”

“We need to know if it’s different. I need to know, at least.”

“Me too.”

“Let me finish my caf.”

“Of course.”

And then down they went.

“Do you want to warm up with some katas first?” Rey asked. “I don’t want you to do too much too soon. You’re still healing.”

“Sure,” he said, and they stood side by side, igniting their sabers, moving through their poses together. Rey watched him out of the corner of her eye for signs of weakness. Certainly he was still favoring his non-injured side a little bit. But his movements were steady and fluid, for the most part. He seemed healthy again. It cheered her.

“Your nightmares are gone, aren’t they,” Rey said when they’d gotten about halfway through. “You’re getting real sleep.”

“So far,” he nodded, continuing to shift from stance to stance. “You’ve had some, though.”

“Nothing sinister, I don’t think. Not from the Force.”

“No, just bad dreams. But they’re upsetting you; I can feel you wake up at night. Do you want to talk about them?”

“Just dreams about the Force nexus.”

“You feel guilty. Don’t. Better, purer men than either of us have fallen to that bastard’s influence.”

“I know that. But it doesn’t really help.”

“I know.”

They fell back into silence, working their way through this most ancient Jedi routine side by side. And then it was over, and they were face to face in ready stance.

Rey couldn’t force herself to make the first move. They stood there in tense silence for an uncomfortably long time. Finally, Kylo led with an opening Rey had never seen before - either one of those weird forms Luke had never had time to teach her, or maybe something he’d come up with himself in his Knights of Ren years - a twirl and slash that was too fancy by half but suited his energy nicely. Rey blocked and the fight was on.

He was still being very careful with his left side, which wasn’t surprising. Rey was, too. She couldn’t bear to think of hitting him there again, even in training mode. So she focused on trying to score hits against his arms, his right side, his legs. It wasn’t her usual sparring mode which made things interesting. But she couldn’t quite get into the flow of it - she still felt tentative, disconnected from the action.

The first near hit was Kylo’s - he faked a swing at her left side then swerved at the last second to her hip, which she avoided by sliding her whole body to the right, using the Force to get the speed needed to evade, then jumping back. And suddenly things seemed to fall into place.

Rey felt right in her body again.

She could feel the power rise in her, the dark-green energy that had adopted her on Dathomir, the pure-white influence of Luke Skywalker - plus a new thread, a warm red sort of depth she’d never encountered before. It wasn’t light, it wasn’t dark, it was entirely her own, and it felt _good_. Good like a mother’s hug.

She grinned and met Kylo’s eyes. “You’re back,” he said. “And…better than ever.”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.” And he spun in again, the same opening as before, faster and harder this time, and she brought her saber up to counter, and met his there. And the fight began in earnest.

If you ignored the fact that he was protecting his left side, Kylo was in better fighting form than Rey had seen him in a long time. The rest he was getting was clearly agreeing with him. He was tireless and quick, and he could put power behind his blows that he hadn’t been able to muster so far on this trip. He came at her with a flurry of sharp, choppy little swings that quickly had her backed into a corner. This was the kind of move she was in the habit of pulling on him, and she smiled, knowing he was playing. Once she had enough corner to work with she used the two walls to push off and launch herself into the air, landing behind him lightly and not wasting a moment of the disorientation she’d managed to create. She attacked his right leg and he only just blocked in time, scoring the floor with the tip of his lightsaber as he did.

“Nice,” he said.

“Not nice enough!” Rey whirled back and brought her saber up, sweeping it from his left leg to his right shoulder, then bringing it down in a blur to try to hit his right side. It didn’t land; he evaded the blow and came in with his own at her neck.

Usually in recent spars Rey would have been in the lead by now, but Kylo really was holding his own. His injury wasn’t holding him back; in fact, he was being more creative, delving into his much deeper knowledge of lightsaber combat forms, pulling out moves that evoked diagrams of Makashi and Djem So she’d traced in the dirt in imitation of Luke but never really bothered to memorize.

He approached her with a lightning-quick blitz one after another right around her head, backing her against the wall again, then attempted a blow from above that Rey only barely ducked away from. He cut off the tip of the long braid she had her hair in. “Does that count as a touch?” Kylo panted with a grin as he tried to pin her in the corner but failed as she slid away.

“You know it doesn’t,” she huffed back, starting to get her head around the idea that she might not win this one. She made as if to kick out at his left side, a feint, and brought her saber around behind him in her left hand. He noticed it just in time to jump away, then wheeled around and herded her back to the corner she’d just escaped, keeping his weapon so close in that she couldn’t do anything but block. She was strong enough to hold him off, but only just. As her saber held his off, she heard herself whisper, “It’s like fighting a real Jedi knight, from stories.”

“It is, isn’t it,” Kylo said, his grin predatory. “Scared, scavenger?”

“Never,” she gasped, kneeing him in the stomach on his right side. He hadn’t been expecting a physical hit and huffed a little “oof” as the wind was knocked out of him for a moment. She took advantage of his surprise to press her lightsaber forward at his neck. He just barely blocked, and his arms were at an awkward angle trying to maintain his block as she pressed harder and harder. He executed a half-kneel, trying to bring his saber back into his full control, but it didn’t quite get him the angle he needed to regain the upper hand. Rey stepped closer, pushing the lightsaber so close to his neck she could smell his stubble singeing.

“What do you say we call this a draw,” she whispered to him with her lips so tantalizingly close above his that she could barely speak.

“Done,” he said, and closed the distance. As if by prior agreement, they extinguished their lightsabers as one and deepened the kiss they’d already started, Rey reveling in being taller than him for a change.

“Let’s never fight again except as friends,” Rey gasped.

“Okay,” Kylo agreed, still kissing.

“You should quit being Supreme Leader,” she continued.

“You’re probably right,” he continued through the kiss.

“We can’t go back to how we were.”

“No.”

“But we don’t know how to do anything else right now.”

“No.”

“This is a lot of talking while we’re still kissing.”

“It sure is,” Kylo agreed, stripping off all the clothes he had that he could remove without breaking their kiss, rising to his feet as he did. “Hells, Rey. Fighting you is like being on fire.”

“Like dancing for your life,” she agreed, undressing as best she could as well.

“Imagine trying to do this in front of people who thought we were on different sides,” he said, suddenly breaking their kiss to burst into laughter. “That misapprehension wouldn’t last long, would it?” He pulled his shirt over his head.

“Ha! No,” Rey agreed. “I have to imagine the, er, charge between us would be hard to miss.”

“Mm,” he concurred, kissing her again, less frantically. “Do you want to go up to a bedroom?”

“Nah,” she said. “Too far.”

“You’re lucky I have such a well-equipped sparring space,” he said, pulling down a wall panel to reveal a tumbling mat and seating himself on it.

“You thought of everything. Cargo hold, sparring space, _and_ sex dungeon,” she murmured, finally nude, devouring him with her eyes as she approached him.

“Aren’t you something,” he said, returning the gaze. “I’ve wanted this so long.”

She straddled him then, kissing softly, slowly, and deeply, feeling his length hard as synthstone between her legs, moving gently against it, her arms resting on his shoulders in a loose embrace, his meeting behind her lower back. It was a lovely position for kissing, and they remained there for a time, enjoying the languid feeling of having just completed a hard workout with just enough energy left to take their time enjoying one another.

Eventually, though, Rey became more targeted in her movements, switching from grinding against him to a more focused sliding that culminated in an easy, very slick insertion that she was able to initiate in an instant. “Ahhhh,” he sighed. “It’s so good inside you, so warm.”

Rey wasn’t much of a talker during sex, but she made eye contact that spoke well enough of her feelings for him in the moment. She moved up and down on him, slowly at first, then more and more quickly as her first orgasm came up on her. She came hard and fast, biting down on his shoulder as she did, leaving a mark. He gasped, and it crossed her mind to worry he’d repeated his last performance, but she figured if that was going to happen it was too late to stop it, and if it hadn’t happened mentioning it wouldn’t help.

“Don’t worry, not over yet,” he breathed with a self-effacing chuckle.

“Are you reading my mind?” she joked.

“Don’t need to, princess,” he said tenderly. “I can read your face well enough. Do you mind if I’m on top for a minute? I’d like to see what it’s like.”

“By all means,” she replied, shifting over so he could guide her onto the mat. There was a moment of rather graceless grunting and wiggling as they tried to maneuver without disengaging, followed by a contented “ohhhh” from Kylo as he settled into the new position. He bent down to flick his tongue against her nipple, rock hard from the aggressive cooling system in the sparring space. She’d had her eyes closed and wasn’t expecting it, and gasped and jolted with the sudden sensation.

“Good?” he asked, concerned.

“Cold,” she confirmed, “but yes, very good.”

He found his rhythm inside her and she put two fingers on her clit, matching it. For a minute they were both silent, enjoying the sensation of their own bodies and the sensation of one another in the Force as their mutual pleasure crescendoed.

“It’s like we’re echoing back and forth - ” Rey murmured.

“I know. Is it always - ”

“No, not like this.”

“Is it just the Force, or - ”

“I’m wondering the same, ah,” Rey broke off, coming hard all of a sudden. She looked up to see Kylo Ren clenching his jaw in deep concentration, trying not to come himself as she contracted around him, her pleasure reverberating in his mind.

“I’m close,” he panted when she’d finished. “Do you want to get back on top? I think I like it better.”

“Sure,” she agreed, “I do too.” He tilted his body sideways to fall onto the mat as she boosted herself up on one arm, and resumed their rhythm with no real break. She didn’t need her hands if she could grind her clit against his pelvis, and used them instead to tweak his nipples, play with his hair, and stroke his cheekbones, driving him into a haze of sensation.

“Gods, Rey, I - oh, ohhhh,” he babbled incoherently, losing his struggle not to orgasm. She came a third time as he did, collapsing onto his chest in a sweaty, graceless heap.

They both took a minute to catch their breath and rejoin consensus reality, and Rey rolled off him, a satisfied look on her face. “_Now_ you’ve had sex,” she said.

“Ahhh, so I have,” he replied. “The ancient Jedi must never have gotten to try it or there’s no way they’d have given it up.”

Rey remembered what Shmi had said about attachment. But it didn’t feel right to bring up his great-grandmother under postcoital circumstances so she kept her own counsel.

“So it’s not always so…so intense in the Force? I felt like I was going to pass out for a minute there, it was so bright and loud,” he asked.

“No, not like that at all,” Rey confirmed. “Maybe the ancient Jedi banned it because when two Force sensitives get it on they end up never wanting to do anything else ever again.”

“Mm,” Kylo hummed contentedly as he rolled to his side to look her in the eye. “Is that an invitation?”

“All I’m saying is I don’t care how long this hyperdrive takes to get us to Mustafar.”

#

But arrive at Mustafar they did. By the time they got there, Kylo Ren was fully healed and they were fairly confident that his nightmares were over. They’d lived on frozen food from the deep fridge for six weeks, and were both feeling well fed, well rested, and well fucked, possibly for the first time in their no-longer-so-young lives.

The _Needle_ touched down on the landing pad and he let out a mighty sigh as they walked down the ramp together. “I’ll ask you one more time. Stay. Please? I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

They stopped at the bottom, facing one another, hand in hand like a couple getting married. “I’ll miss you too, but you know I can’t. I killed the Supreme Leader, remember? I’m wanted in every civilized system. You can’t hide me in the Grouch Castle forever.”

“I’m telling you again, there are a _lot_ of rooms in the Grouch Castle. Maybe not forever, but I can hide you for a good long time.”

“But I don’t want to be hidden. I want to get back to the Resistance. I want to take down this stupid, brutal, corrupt regime once and for all.”

“I’ll do what I can to help you from the inside.”

“And I’ll do what I can to establish that you’re my mole and your information is good, if you can get it out to me. Hopefully it’ll be enough. But you know how hard it’ll be to convince them you’ve turned.”

“I know. I may still have to do some pretty horrible things.”

“I know. And I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You know how I’m oriented in the Force. It won’t hurt me as it would you.”

“Ben,” she said seriously. “I don’t care how you’re oriented in the Force. You’re still a good person. It still hurts you. Be careful.”

“Not that good,” he said, with a shake of his head. “But I’ll try.”

They turned to walk to Rey’s X-wing where she’d left it months ago. “My apologies in advance to your mechanic droids. I don’t know what they’re going to make of your whole hyperdrive, er, situation.”

“They’ll manage,” he laughed.

“You have my private comm. Use it whenever you can.”

“Gods,” he said, his voice going scratchy. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

“Me too,” she said, wrapping him in a tight hug so he wouldn’t see her eyes fill with tears. She blinked them back. “Is it wrong that part of me is hoping my ship doesn’t start and I can stay?”

“Not wrong,” he whispered. “Not at all.”

“Nothing for it, though,” she said as she released him, her emotions back in check. “We’ll meet again, I know it, and under better circumstances. But there’s no sense prolonging this goodbye. We’ve done what we needed to do.”

He squared his jaw. “I know.”

She opened her X-wing’s cockpit and eased herself in. “Ah, luxury,” she said. “Gods, I’m going to miss your ship.”

“Oh, do you have food?” it occurred to Kylo to ask.

“Yes,” Rey said, not needing to check the cache of ration bars she kept in the compartment under the seat. “Not six months’ worth, but I don’t need six months’ worth.”

“Take care,” he said, his voice breaking again. “May the Force be with you.”

“And also with you,” Rey replied tenderly. “Be kind when you can, and take care of yourself. I’ll get you out of this as soon as I’m able.”

“I know,” he whispered as she closed the cockpit and initiated her takeoff sequence.

Rey waved a wistful goodbye as her starfighter rose into the air. He waved back, standing tall. She kept looking for longer than he’d expected, though, because she still had her eyes on him for the moment when he burst into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there we have it. Expect a brief epilogue on Thursday to tie up one loose end, but beyond that if you want any more of this story you'll have to write it yourselves <3
> 
> On Thanksgiving last week I was reflecting on how thankful I am to have this sort of writing as a creative outlet. The hardest part of writing fiction (for me anyway) is finding an audience that cares at all about the story you're trying to tell, and I can't convey what a pleasure it is to have an engaged, excited audience without having to work too hard to locate it. It keeps me writing fic instead of working on original fiction and I'm...starting to be okay with that. 
> 
> All of which is to say, thanks so much for the comments and kudos, and recommending my work to friends who'd enjoy it. As all of you know, that's how fanfiction authors get paid :) and it means the world to me.


	18. Epilogue

“You took longer than expected,” said a familiar voice as Rey entered the ruin. “I was under the mistaken impression that you’d be back within a few weeks.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey said. “Things have been…busy. But I never forgot I owed you this.” She held up the battered tetrahedron. “And I wanted to check in on how things have been going.”

Asajj Ventress’s face lit up to see the holocron again, and she led the way through the temple grounds into the passageway to return it to the reliquary where it had been before Rey had borrowed it. “Things have been going well. I gather you took care of your - little problem?”

“Yes,” Rey said. “Haven’t been pregnant in a standard year, and it feels _great_.”

“And what news of your Sith? Did you kill him?”

“He never was a Sith, you know,” Rey corrected. “He’s fine. I seduced him, well, not back to the Light, per se - ”

“Tsssk,” Asajj tutted. “You can’t trust those sorts of conversions, child! The naivete of youth. Watch your back with him, always.”

“I always do,” Rey said fondly. “Don’t worry about me, Asajj.”

“I must,” she replied mournfully. “You make such stupid decisions, little sister.”

“Guilty as charged,” Rey grinned. “Anyway, enough about my disaster of a love life. I want to hear what happened with my midi-chlorians. And talk a little galactic politics, if you’re up for it.”

“Of course,” Asajj said contentedly. “We’ll just return this holocron and I’ll show you some of my experiments. Nothing has come to fruition yet - the timing is very tricky, this planet has too many moons and they’ve all got to be just so - but it looks promising. I think we may be able to speak to one or more of the Mothers in the Force within the next couple of months. And perhaps they can help me to restore the sisterhood, in some form.”

“I’d love to speak with them, if they’re willing.”

“Oh, they will be. You’re the closest we have to a living Nightsister.”

“I’ve learned a few things myself, things the Nightsisters may want to know if you ever manage to get a new order together again. I was thinking perhaps I could make a holocron for you to store in the reliquary, to expand on the teachings of Mother Anaphrax, in case anyone ever has need of it.”

“_Interesting_,” Asajj purred.

“I hope so.” They arrived at the door of the chamber where Rey had originally obtained the holocron. Rey put her hands on the stone circle to open the door without prompting, and entered with the holocron in her outstretched hand. The doors scraped shut behind her, leaving her in darkness. The holocron lit up in its dim red shade, rose from her hand, and found its own way back to a shelf. She turned to leave, and the doors opened again, returning her to the comforting green light of Asajj’s Force ghost.

“And you’d mentioned galactic politics?” Asajj asked, clearly more curious than she’d let on.

“Indeed,” Rey said. “The Resistance is preparing for a major strike against the First Order, after a year of successful operations that have destabilized their government, sowing mistrust at the highest levels. It occurred to me that a couple of well-placed suspicious deaths or defections in their military brass might help us a lot; we can strike as the power vacuum grows dire, and perhaps that will be enough. I was reading a Clone Wars history in the Resistance library the other day, and it mentioned a mysterious figure I thought you might have heard of named ‘Mother Talzin’ who attempted to assassinate Count Dooku from a long distance…?”

Asajj threw back her head and laughed. “She sure did,” she cackled. “Stars, they practically wiped out the Nightsisters in retaliation, but it was almost worth it.”

“These men aren’t Force sensitive, so they’ll have no idea what hit them. They’ll probably think it’s an infectious disease at first, and having it spread through the ranks will cause a panic. Is it a terribly resource-intensive thing to do?”

“No, no, only you’ll need some of their hair. Not always easy to procure, but everything else is simple enough.”

“That…can be arranged,” Rey said, thinking of her man on the inside, and what a bold, coldly effective spy he’d become in the past year. That mask hid everything. “It may take a bit, but we’ve got a bit.”

“Come back when you’ve got it and I’ll walk you through it, sister. Now, about that holocron you wanted to record…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In conclusion: if it turns out anyone other than Kylo Ren gives birth to Kylo Ren's offspring in IX think of me...and my head bursting into actual flames from rage in the theater...
> 
> Best wishes to all for a lovely holiday season, happy new year, and all the plot points you're dreaming of showing up in TRoS <3
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


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